


Something's Missing

by ratbandaid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reunions, celebrity dimitri, dammit sylvain dimitri just wants good eats, food blogger (and mild nuisance) sylvain, mentions of depression, professional chef felix, stop dragging him into ur weird love life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23334466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratbandaid/pseuds/ratbandaid
Summary: Felix Hugo Fraldarius, world-renowned chef and Faerghus's resident grouch, has decided to open up his very own restaurant. Little does he know that popular food blogger and food aficionado, Sylvain Jose Gautier, is looking for new restaurants to test his ongoing investigation into his friend, Dimitri, and his inability to taste certain things.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 56
Kudos: 192
Collections: Sylvix Squad Super Stories





	1. *sylvain voice* can i speak to the manager :/

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't have an explanation than this other than the fact that my brain really just said hrrrnuguhnrrghngnrugh fELIX......... BUT HE COOK GOOD........ and I couldn't write anything without thinking about this so here it is! Also wanted to try my hand at writing something soft and happy, rather than something riddled with angst every other sentence ^^;; Keep in mind that I am not an expert chef or food critic or anything like that so there will probably be a lot of mistakes.
> 
> Note: I referenced a few of the fe3h recipes from @space_ellien on Twitter! (If they ask me to take this down for referencing their recipes, please note that I will do so without hesitation!)

Sylvain flops back against his pillows on his bed, his laptop balancing precariously on his stomach. He scrolls through the near endless sea of comments of his latest food review, replying to a few questions about the dishes he tried and a few heartfelt comments about how his reviews _never fail to bring a smile_ to someone’s face or how someone’s _stomach will always start growling_ when they read his review. His last review was published a few weeks ago, and he’s due to post another one soon, if he wants to keep his viewership high. The problem is that Dimitri has been out of town for the past two weeks on a major business trip, and Sylvain can’t exactly produce content without him.

After all, his blog kind of depends on having Dimitri around. His blog had been founded on the basis that Dimitri had lost much of his ability to taste certain foods following a certain traumatic event. Sylvain had claimed in his very first post that he was trying to investigate what kinds of foods famous celebrity and close friend Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd was able to taste. In all actuality, though, it was just an excuse to spend more time with his friend, share their fun hangouts to the world, and promote a few, struggling businesses. He knew that having Dimitri on would bring in support from those who liked him, but he had never imagined that his silly blog would ever attract so much attention—he’s been getting paid sponsorships by restaurants and other businesses, requests from fans to have popup meet-and-greets or even live Q & A sessions, and he’s even had several companies reach out to try and turn his blogs into a video series.

But Sylvain’s always liked writing out witty accounts and posting photos he took himself so he’s always turned down the offers. He’s accepted a few sponsorships, though most of the money he gets goes straight to the restaurants that he and Dimitri go to. Dimitri hadn’t wanted any of the money, stating that he is already well-off, and Sylvain already had a job of his own that paid him quite well. This was supposed to just be a fun side-gig, but it ended up growing much bigger. It was unexpected, but greatly appreciated. After all, more funding meant more delicious meals with his friend and more happy viewers.

Luckily for him, Dimitri has told him that he made it back to Faerghus and is in the middle of unpacking his suitcases at his home. Dimitri and Sylvain should be able to get together and research some good places to eat together soon.

Sylvain spends around ten more minutes looking around his comments before his phone rings, the loud vibrating of his phone against the his nightstand practically echoing throughout his empty house. Keeping his gaze on his laptop screen, he swats blindly at his side until he grabs his phone and accepts the call.

“Hello?”

“Ah, hello, Sylvain,” comes Dimitri’s voice through the grainy speaker. “I wanted to ask if you had some time to spare.”

“Anything for you, Your Highness,” Sylvain jokes, sitting up in his bed and shutting his laptop. “Weren’t you the busy one though? I thought you were unpacking.”

Dimitri chuckles. “Well, I _was_ unpacking, but I got hungry and started looking for places to eat. I actually called because I found this really nice restaurant. Apparently, it opened about a month ago and is run by some famous chef.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow as he moves from his apartment’s bedroom to his kitchen. “A famous chef?” He pins his phone between his shoulder and his cheek as he makes himself a cup of tea. “Who?”

“Well, I can’t remember his name right off the top of my head, but I remember hearing that it’s a very popular restaurant right now. It’d probably do your blog some good to dine there, don’t you think?”

Sylvain can’t help the small smile spreading across his face. He isn’t sure who taught Dimitri to speak so formally, but it never fails to crack him up—and when Dimitri gets kind of upset at you and tries to chew you out, _oh,_ Sylvain always gets on his case about it. That's where their whole joke about him secretly being royalty came from.

“Sure thing.” He brings his cup up to his lips.

“I’m glad you agree. Our reservation is in an hour.”

Sylvain nearly spits out his tea. “What?”

Dimitri laughs, though Sylvain can hear the sheepishness lurking beneath the amusement. “It is quite notorious for having long waits so I made a reservation.” There’s a pause. “Ah, well, unless you have plans. I’d be more happy to reschedule.” Another pause, and Sylvain can practically feel the dread and apprehension radiating off Dimitri through the phone speaker. “I’m sorry. That was quite presumptuous and selfish of me, wasn’t it? I hadn’t considered if you had any plans.”

Sylvain sets his tea down on the counter. “Hey, no worries,” he replies. “I don’t have any plans—and no, I’m not just saying that for you.” He smiles when he hears the quietest sigh of relief from Dimitri, as if he had been holding his breath. “I just didn’t think I’d have to be getting all fancied up tonight.”

“Oh, there is no specific dress code." Dimitri is quick to reassure him. “I’m sure you can come in what you are wearing, so long as you are fully dressed.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I came dressed in a clown costume or something?”

"Sylvain, you needn’t dress to look like a clown.” Sylvain can hear the smile in Dimitri’s words.

“Ouch. That hurts, Your Highness.” Even so, Sylvain laughs.

-

The restaurant, The Lone Wolf, is as lonely in appearance as its name suggests. The Lone Wolf is a large building set apart from other restaurants and stores, almost setting it in the middle of nowhere. Don’t get Sylvain wrong—it’s a very aesthetically pleasing building, with warm candles illuminating perfectly-set tables placed outside on a fancy patio and lovely string lights hung up along the trees out in front. There’s even a beautiful, clear artificial lake with moss-covered rocks and actual living fish paddling around in it. Plus, the logo is a pretty cool wolf. It’s just that when the closest buildings are hotels that are still being constructed and the surrounding place is almost all wilderness, it’s a little off-putting, especially given that this restaurant is supposedly very reputable and all that.

At least the view seems pretty nice. Who knew that there was such place in Faerghus that wasn’t all dried grass and leafless trees?

“A little odd to put such a well-acclaimed restaurant,” Dimitri muses, taking the words right from Sylvain’s mouth, as Sylvain snaps a picture of The Lone Wolf’s exterior with his camera. “You think that it’d be closer to the city to attract more people.”

“Well, I guess that’s why all the hotels are being constructed over there—they probably want to capitalize on this chef’s restaurant.” Sylvain pulls open and holds the fancy front door for Dimitri, who politely thanks him and heads in. To Sylvain’s surprise, the wait isn’t very long, despite how the whole building looks packed full of people.

The inside of the building is just as nicely furnished as Sylvain would have thought it to be. Right as you enter, there is a large and dramatic, crystal chandelier hanging overhead, glimmering and glinting from every angle as it catches the light. The tables are all fitted with a white tablecloth and a bunch of fancy silverware. The walls show off a vintage style with its red bricks and shuttered, French windows. The hardwood floor is polished until it seems to sparkle, and the stairs leading up to the second floor have an elegant and velvety red carpet with gold linings.

Sylvain feels like he’s standing in a castle. He takes out his camera once again and snaps a few pictures, ignoring the questioning looks from other patrons. By the time that he and Dimitri get to the front, Sylvain already has quite a bit of photos.

“Good evening, and welcome to The Lone Wolf,” a short, purple-haired woman greets them. “Um, do you have a reservation?”

“Ah, yes. I believe that it should be under the name ‘Sylvain Gautier.’”

Dimitri gives Sylvain a sheepish look for using his name to make the reservation, like he always tends to when he’s the one making the reservations, but Sylvain doesn’t mind—after all, Dimitri is a rather popular celebrity. Using his name freely to make reservations wouldn’t be very wise.

The woman nods and finds their name in the reservation book. “Ah! F-for eight thirty, right?” When Dimitri nods, she picks up two menus and smiles at them. “Um, if you could follow me, I’ll lead you to your table,” she squeaks at them.

Dimitri and Sylvain follow their waitress to a table, already neatly set for them with a candle neatly set in the center of the table. Sylvain snaps another photo before he sits down, across from Dimitri.

“Could I get you two something to drink?” she asks, setting the menus in front of them and tucking her arms behind her back. Sylvain thinks that she looks a bit nervous. Maybe it’s her first day on the job. “Maybe an appetizer?”

Sylvain opens up the menu and looks up at their waitress, flashing her a smile. “I think we’ll need some time to think about the appetizer and the rest of the meal, but I’ll take a glass of water.”

“And I will take water as well.”

Their waitress—'Bernadetta,’ reads her nametag in a fancy front engraved directly into the sleek metal—nods and scampers away.

“This place is really nice." Sylvain casts his glance around the restaurant, taking in the view. “I wonder who that famous chef you were talking about is, though.” He shrugs. “I guess I have some researching to do later, huh?”

“It shouldn’t be too difficult.” Dimitri opens up his menu and sets it on the table in front of him. “I’ve heard he’s very famous—and from around here too.”

Sylvain wracks his brain for a possible name to fit that description, but he can’t for the life of him think of anyone.

Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. One name does come to mind, but Sylvain is quick to push that name and the odd, conflicting feelings it always dredges up with it. In the end, Sylvain gives up on trying to figure out who it is, deeming it thoroughly easier to look up who the chef is. But, of course, he thinks he ought to pick something to eat first. Research can wait.

His gaze skims over the fancy, curly font and the blue and silver borders. The descriptions of the food are short and straightforward—it lacks that honeyed fluff that other restaurants have, trying to make their food sound beautiful and delicious. Instead, it simply states what the dish is. Sylvain raises an eyebrow and makes a note of it but makes no comment about it.

“Hmm, I think that I’d just like the cheesy Verona stew as an appetizer.” Dimitri points at the dish on the menu and looks up at Sylvain. “Sounds nice.”

Sylvain grins. “You did always say that you can taste cheese pretty well.” He flicks his gaze down at the menu and takes a glance at the description underneath the name of the dish in the appetizers section— _a rich dish consisting of butternut squash and sautéed cod fillets, boiled and served with two kinds of melted cheese_. “Hmm, it doesn’t look half bad, actually. I’ll get one too.”

“As for my main course, I’m not quite sure yet. What are you thinking?”

Sylvain hums noncommittally and looks down at the menu. “Haven’t thought that far yet either.” He skims through the menu once again, and his gaze stops when he sees a meal name he hasn’t seen in quite a while—a name that brings him all sorts of warm, fuzzy, happy, _soft_ memories, a name that makes his mouth water and his heart yearn. _Two-fish sauté_ , the menu reads, _two types of fish are cut into strips and sautéed in butter._

“I’m getting the two-fish sauté,” Sylvain tells Dimitri. Dimitri smiles at him.

“Oh! I remember that dish. Didn’t you used to love it?” When Sylvain nods, Dimitri’s smile only grows a little. “Getting a little nostalgic tonight, it seems.” He looks down at the menu. “I think that the cheese gratin sounds pretty good.”

When Bernadetta returns with their drinks, she takes their orders and scampers back to the kitchen. Meanwhile, Sylvain and Dimitri catch up and fill the air with their idle conversations. Any conversation between them is a fun on, and even when they aren’t talking, the silence is simply comfortable. The atmosphere of the restaurant only adds to the comfort that Sylvain feels. The décor all feels so familiar and homey, like stepping into a warm and softly-lit house after an exhausting day at work. Even the soft murmur of other customers speaking is soothing in a way.

-

Sylvain isn’t keeping track of the time, too caught up in his current conversation with Dimitri about Dimitri’s most recent business trip. He’s surprised by when Bernadetta returns with two, small and steaming bowls of stew.

“Careful,” she says as she sets the bowls in front of Dimitri and Sylvain, and the porcelain gently clatters against the wood of the table. “It’s hot.” She takes a small step back. “I hope you enjoy! Your meals will be ready soon! I’ll be around so u-um, if you need me, just say so.”

“Thank you!” Dimitri bows his head the tiniest bit with his thanks.

"Thanks.” Sylvain nods in acknowledgment at Bernadetta and quickly adjusts the setting around the little bow. He plays with the placement of his utensils and angles his camera a few different ways before snapping a few pictures. Dimitri gives a small laugh.

“Diligent as always,” he remarks. Sylvain only grins at him. “Can I eat yet?”

Sylvain scrolls through the photos that he’s taken, making sure that there’s nothing weirdly incriminating for either of them and that the photo looks nice—crisp, focused, detailed, aesthetically pretty. If not, then Sylvain supposes he has more work to do later, editing photos until his neck and back hurt from being hunched over his laptop for such long periods of time.

But most of the photos seem to look okay at first glance so he gestures at Dimitri’s bowl of stew. “Go ahead.”

Sylvain props his elbows up on the table and folds his hands in front of his face, waiting patiently as he always does when he and Dimitri go out to eat together. Dimitri picks up his spoon, ignoring Sylvain’s curious gaze with ease—after all, he’s used to it. It has practically become habit for Sylvain to wait for Dimitri to eat first. Sylvain wanted to get Dimitri’s genuine reaction before his own opinion could influence what Dimitri tasted or thought.

Dimitri’s eyes light up with a sort of childish glee upon his first spoonful of the cheesy Verona stew. He quickly swallows and locks eyes with Sylvain, practically bubbling with excitement. “Sylvain! This—this taste! I can taste it!” he stammers out, his tongue getting tied from how fast he’s trying to put his thoughts into coherent sentences. “It’s incredible!”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow, but he smiles nonetheless. “Wow, really? What, specifically, do you think that you can taste?”

Dimitri hurriedly takes another spoonful of the stew and waits, as if letting the flavor set in his mouth. “Definitely the cheese,” he starts because Dimitri _always_ seems to point out the taste of cheeses and butter—and sometimes even olive oil or certain spices—due to his hypogeusia. “Both types! They’re very different and distinct, but they complement each other rather well. But other than that, there’s something kind of, hmm, _sweet_ and I really enjoy it!”

Sylvain laughs. “Well, you have always been pretty fond of sweeter things, huh?” Sylvain picks up his own spoon. “Might be the butternut squash that you’re tasting.”

“Ah, that makes sense." Dimitri shakes his head and smiles at Dimitri. "Regardless, I truly do enjoy this dish!”

Sylvain, too, enjoys the dish. It’s sweet, like Dimitri said, and it’s rich in flavor, like the menu had promised. It’s soft and soothing with just enough seasoning to make the dish feel alive.

Yet, he can’t help but to feel that something is missing. It’s a little… bland.

“Hmm." Sylvain frowns a little and takes another spoonful of the stew, as if to reaffirm his thoughts. Needless to say, his opinion doesn't change. Dimitri seems to catch the look on Sylvain's face and cocks his head.

"Something wrong?"

"Needs salt,” Sylvain muses, and Dimitri gives a soft chuckle in response.

“Is that so? I find that it is perfectly fine the way it is.”

"But your diet also says to avoid adding too much salt to your food,” Sylvain points out. Nevertheless, he continues to eat. “It’s not bad at all though. Just a little lacking.”

When Bernadetta comes by again to check up on them and fill their glasses with water, Sylvain stops her just before she leaves.

“Excuse me. Can you bring me a little salt?”

“Salt? Is the food _bad_?” Bernadetta wrings her hands, and a flash of concern darts across her expression for a split second. "Oh gosh..."

Sylvain blinks at her. “Huh? Bad? Oh, not at all! I just think it’s a bit bland—you know, missing something.”

Bernadetta averts her gaze and fidgets a little. “Um, would you like me to forward your complaint to the head chef?”

Sylvain quickly shakes his head. “Oh, no. That’s not necessary. The food is actually really good. It could just use a touch of salt.” He flashes her a pleasant smile, but she doesn’t seem to take it as other servers have done in the past.

Instead of a smile in return or maybe a friendly chuckle, the poor girl flinches. “You want me to b-bring you salt?” When Sylvain raises an eyebrow at her odd behavior, she blurts out, “Um, y-yes! I’ll go and ask for salt r-right now! I’ll be back in a second!” She turns on her heels, her shoulders square and her hands clasped as if in prayer, and she hurries to the kitchen.

“You’d think that they would leave some sort of condiments on the tables.” Sylvain shakes his head. _Is this chef so cocky that he thinks everything he makes is perfect?_ Sylvain can’t help but to think. _That his customers won’t think that adding any condiments would be necessary, even if it’s just personal preference?_

“Did she seem a little apprehensive to you, or was that just me?” Dimitri asks.

“Oh definitely.” Sylvain nods. “She seems a little jumpy, but maybe it’s her first day here or something.” At this answer, Dimitri nods sagely, as if he had just received a revelation of some sort.

“It is not as though you had been very rude to her.” Dimitri frowns. “I wonder what that’s all about.”

“Eh, it’s probably nothing.” Sylvain grins at him. “Anyway, I wonder if you’ll like the cheese gratin too.”

“I do think so! If the cheese gratin is anything like this stew, I feel that I will be able to taste the food just fine.” Dimitri looks genuinely excited about being able to taste, and Sylvain doesn’t want to be a buzzkill so he just smiles along with him.

Bernadetta drops by with a little salt shaker and quietly informs them that their food is almost ready before practically taking off, but Sylvain chalks that up to her nerves again and simply ignores it despite Dimitri commenting on it again. Sylvain wonders if perhaps he’ll enjoy his main meal more. After all, there are off-days and, of course, times when you make meals that simply aren’t as great as what you usually make. Sylvain is happy to add a touch of salt to his soup and finish it, though he does feel that something else could be added to really make it better.

After Bernadetta serves them their main courses and quickly disappears into the restaurant to presumably serve some of the other, seemingly countless customers, Sylvain snaps a picture of his and Dimitri’s meals. Dimitri, again, takes the first bite of his meal and glows with praise about the cheese and the fruity sauce drizzled over the chicken.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like this,” Dimitri gushes with a smile. “Quite a unique flavor.”

Sylvain smiles at him. “Sounds good.” He flicks his gaze down to Dimitri’s plate, to the bird meat topped with cheese and a fruity sauce. Its plating and garnishing are dramatic and fanciful, fit with some sort of crumbs along the edges of the plate and a few aesthetically-pleasing shapes drawn with the sauce. “You know, it actually looks like something that my mom used to make a lot.”

“Really?” Dimitri looks surprised. “I’ve personally never had this dish.”

“It’s a lot fancier than what my mom made,” Sylvain quickly adds, “but she made something kind of like this. Maybe it was different. I don’t really know.”

Dimitri gestures down at his plate with his fork. “Would you like a bite? If it brings you any sort of pleasant nostalgia, I’d be more than happy to share.”

 _Pleasant nostalgia?_ Sylvain thinks with an unfairly bitter tone. _Not particularly. I’ve only had a handful of good memories with this meal and they all included a friend I don’t really talk to anymore._

Even despite the bittersweet reminders of a gloomy childhood and a familiar face he yearns to see, Sylvain manages to give Dimitri his signature, good-natured smile and wave him off. “Nah, I’m good.” Sylvain picks up his own fork and gestures down at his plate. “I have my own meal to eat.”

“Go on then,” Dimitri tells him with a smile.

Sylvain takes another bite of his food. In all honesty, this meal is much better than the stew. He thinks it’s practically perfect. Perhaps he’s biased. After all, this is one of his favorite dishes of all time, associated with some good memories. As he savors the taste, Sylvain remembers a few memories of warm summer sunsets, the smell of the fish cooking from the kitchen while his best friend laughed beside him on the couch; he remembers sneaking away from the house in the middle of the night to meet that friend in their treehouse, playing video games until their parents found them passed out in the treehouse the morning after; he remembers holding his best friend through the happy times and the sad times.

The food is warm; the memories are too. But his chest feels cold and painful, like he’s filled to the brim with conflicting feelings—a bittersweet combination. He feels like he’s choking on his nostalgia, on his loneliness and yearning, on his love. He misses those old days.

“Sylvain?” Dimitri gently prompts. “You okay?”

“Hmm? Of course.” Sylvain snaps himself out of his thoughts and tries to think of something to say. “I was just thinking.”

“Ah. Well, a penny for your thoughts?”

Sylvain smiles at him. Thinking on his feet, Sylvain grabs the salt shaker again. “Just thought about how this one needed salt too.”

Dimitri shakes his head. “Perhaps your tastes simply differ from that of the chef.” He sets his utensils down. “Should I call over Bernadetta?”

“Nah. It’s all good.” Sylvain knows that this dish really doesn’t need any other seasoning, but he’s already committed himself to this so he taps out a little bit of salt onto his dish—just enough to see it coming out of the salt shaker, but just enough so that it isn’t actually too salty. “I really like this dish, but I guess I just like things saltier.”

The rest of the meal, filled with their comfortable conversations and lively laughter, seems to go by without a hitch. At least, until it’s time for dessert. They had both ordered the same dessert, the peach sorbet, but just as Bernadetta was about to leave, Dimitri had mentioned Sylvain’s second dish being bland again, which made her freeze up again. She apologized and just about disappeared in the blink of an eye, heading back to the kitchen.

“You didn’t have to tell her, you know,” Sylvain remarks, crossing his arms and leaning forward a little on the table. “Maybe she’s all freaked out because that head chef that you mentioned is actually a demon.”

“Oh. I see.” Dimitri frowns. “You don’t think I put her in a hard spot, do you?”

 _Oh, Dimitri,_ Sylvain wants to say. Instead, he just shrugs. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Working at a place like this probably requires some sort of resolve, right?”

Dimitri nods along. “I can see that. This does seem like quite an establishment to be working at. Hopefully, she’ll be okay.”

Bernadetta returns with their peach sorbet, but instead of walking off to attend to the other customers, she silently stands by the table with a troubled look.

“Is there an issue?” Dimitri asks, cocking his head as Sylvain takes a few pictures of the peach sorbet dish.

“Ah, n-not at all! I was just asked to, um, be on standby. Just in case you think there’s something wrong with this dish too.”

Sylvain waves his hand at her. “I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sorry to have caused you all such trouble. I’m just a little picky. That’s all.”

But Bernadetta doesn’t budge. She waits there by the table, brightening when Dimitri tastes the dish and smiles. He tells Sylvain about how nice the dessert is, how he can taste the sweetness and the peaches and cream in the ice cream.

“It’s great,” Dimitri is saying as Sylvain dips the tip of his spoon into the ice cream. “Everything I’ve had at this restaurant has been something that I could taste.”

Sylvain feels his mouth watering as he brings the spoonful of ice cream up to his lips. He’s always been quite a fan of this dessert. And even though he considers himself something of a connoisseur of peach sorbet after all the years he’s had of eating this sweet, he thinks there’s no wrong way to make peach sorbet.

At least, he’s thought that before he tried this restaurant’s peach sorbet.

This time, he isn’t quite sure if something is missing—perhaps something is too abundant. Yes, that’s it. It’s too sweet. It’s as if the chef had dumped all the sugar they could find directly into this dish, and Sylvain can’t tell if that was intentional or not. And the texture isn’t very even or smooth. Sure, it’s not too terrible since Sylvain likes sweets and loves peach sorbet, but it’s a little off-putting, a little too saccharine. He must be making a face because Dimitri is giving him a concerned look and Bernadetta looks horrified.

“Is something wrong?”

“Hey, Dima, can I try some of yours?”

Dimitri wordlessly pushes his bowl towards Sylvain. Sylvain takes a spoonful and finds that the overabundance of sugar is there too. He makes a face.

“Wow. It’s, um, really, really sweet.” He smiles at Dimitri. “Tastes like it was made by someone who hasn’t had anything sweet to eat in years,” he jokes. “Maybe they think that people just like a _lot_ of sugar.”

“I’m really sorry! Sorry! Should I get the head chef?” Bernadetta squeaks. “Oh gosh, um, I’ll go see about a refund—”

Both Dimitri and Sylvain cut her off, practically speaking over each other in their frantic efforts to calm her. Sylvain tries to ignore the curious stares of neighboring customers.

“Hey, there’s no need for a refund! We enjoyed the meal, and we’re going to pay!”

“Please, don’t worry! We are still paying for all the hard work and time put into our dishes! I really enjoyed my meal.”

Bernadetta gulps and frowns. “A-a-are you sure?” she asks.

“Yep. It’s not your fault or your chef’s fault. It’s just me being picky. Promise.” Sylvain smiles at her. “You don’t even have to tell your chef about this.”

“Please, don’t worry.” Dimitri has gone back to eating the peach sorbet. “I am truly sorry for any trouble we’ve caused so please, calm down. We don’t need to speak to anyone or get a refund.”

“Oh, I-I don’t know…” Bernadetta fidgets with her hands. But eventually, when she hears someone calling her name, she gives a small nod. “Um, okay. I’ll be around so don’t hesitate to call me over.”

Dimitri and Sylvain exchange a look, a look of concern and shock.

“I wonder how this boss is treating these workers to make her freak out like that.” Sylvain shakes his head. “Must be one hell of a boss, huh?”

“I hope she is alright. She seemed so ready to try and get us a refund. I don’t believe we had any serious complaints—especially ones that would warrant a refund…”

Even so, they resume eating their dessert—or, rather, Dimitri continues eating his dessert while Sylvain makes conversation and prods at the peach sorbet with his spoon.

A sudden bang from the back of the restaurant resounds and silences everyone. Eyes anxiously and curiously flicker over to the kitchen, where a man—wearing a chef coat with the signature colors of the restaurant, an apron, and even a little chef toque atop his head—is storming past the two doors and out into the dining area. A ginger-haired waitress and Bernadetta trail after him, tugging at his sleeve and speaking to him, but he wrenches his arm away and keeps walking.

People avert their gazes as he walks by but lock their nosy gazes on him when he quickly passes their table. Sylvain looks away and resumes his conversation with Dimitri, assuming that the chef has to tend to some business with an employee.

Then the chef stops by Sylvain’s table and slams his hands down on the table. The plates and silverware and cups clatter and tremble from the force of the slam, and Dimitri scrambles to grab the teetering candle. Sylvain blinks in shock and looks over at the chef.

The chef’s eyebrows are furrowed, his eyes narrowed, and his lips are screwed down into a stern scowl. “All I’ve been hearing from this table is _nothing_ but criticism! You must think you’re _so_ good at cooking, huh?” he snaps. “Let’s see you do any better! I don’t see you two opening up your own restaurants!”

“We’re very sorry, sir,” Dimitri quickly amends, holding his hands up in a placating manner. Sylvain can hear Dimitri’s diplomatic voice kicking in. “We had no intentions of offending you—”

The chef scoffs. “Really? _Really_?” Because I get customers like you idiots all the damn time. You clowns come waltzing in here with the sole purpose of trying to criticize my cooking and demoralize my cooks when I know for a _fact_ that none of you can cook half as well as we can!” He wrinkles his nose, looking like a snarling dog. “And you—!” He flicks his gaze to stare at Sylvain, but Sylvain sees an odd flicker of _something_ in his eyes for a split second.

“Come on, Felix,” the ginger waitress huffs. She gives Dimitri a sheepish look. “I’m so sorry. He’s not typically like this, I promise! He’s really sweet, and—and he’s just had a really hard day today!” She pulls at Felix’s sleeve, but Felix doesn't budge, keeping his gaze trained on Sylvain. “Come on! I know Ashe wants to ask you about something. Er, probably! Let’s just go back, okay?”

“I’m so sorry!” Bernadetta squeaks out. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t think that he’d act like this! I-I shouldn’t have said anything! Gosh, I-I’m so s-sorry!”

“Bernie, you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? You don’t need to apologize!” the ginger waitress promises. “Felix! Leave these two alone already!”

Sylvain isn’t particularly listening to the rage spewing from the chef’s mouth nor the poor waitresses’ explanation of what’s going on. His head is too busy spinning from his own revelation, too busy clinging to the name that the ginger girl had said, too busy taking in the appearance of his angry chef.

Sylvain feels his heart nearly stop. “Felix?”

Felix's eyes widen a little, and he blinks, near dumbfounded. “ _Sylvain_?”

"You know him?” Dimitri asks quietly, awed.

"Felix!” Sylvain laughs loudly and stands up, throwing an arm around Felix’s shoulder. He knows that he probably looks goofy with his big smile, but he can’t help it. Bernadetta and the other waitress—Annette, Dimitri later tells him—watch with tense shoulders and wide eyes, as if waiting for disaster.

Felix just grumbles something under his breath, averting his gaze, and swats lightly at his arm.

“It’s been so long!” Sylvain continues, letting go of his one-armed hug and ignoring the way that his body yearns to cling to Felix once more. “How have you been?”

And like the entire restaurant let out a breath that it had been holding, conversation starts to slowly trickle back into place and fill the air as everyone begins to disregard Felix and Sylvain. The tense atmosphere fades just as quickly as it had appeared. Even so, Annette and Bernadetta share shocked looks, and Dimitri just stares, confused.

“Fine.” Felix turns to Bernadetta and Annette. “It’s fine now. I know him. Go on and get back to work.”

Though hesitant, they both leave, but not before Annette can warn Felix, “Don’t you dare do anything stupid or mean to our customers! Do you hear me, Felix? I mean it!”

Sylvain takes his seat again and beams up at Felix, who rests one hand on his hip and narrows his eyes.

“Of course. It _would_ be you,” he says, and Sylvain only laughs. “I was wondering who would be dumb enough to try and argue with me about my cooking.” He shakes his head.

“It tasted fine, Fe,” Sylvain assures him. “It was just missing a bit something here and there. Also, your baking still needs work. The peach sorbet was way too sweet!"

“Sylvain.” Dimitri says his name quietly, the same soft but stern tone a mother uses towards an unruly child in public. “You can’t just say that to a world-renowned chef…”

But contrary to Dimitri’s beliefs, Felix simply looks unbothered. If anything, he doesn’t look angry; he almost looks embarrassed. “Our head patisserie is sick today,” he tells them. “I figured I could take up her job instead of stressing our other cooks, but I guess it would have been better just to reassign roles tonight.”

Sylvain grins at him. “Oh man. If I had known you were working here, I would have dropped by earlier!”

Felix crosses his arms. “Well, I thought you’d know about me by now.” He nods at Dimitri. “Your friend seems to know a little more about what I’ve been up to than you.” He frowns. “Where have you even been? It’s like you dropped off the face of the Earth as soon as you quit out of Garreg Mach.”

“Ah, well, I’ve been a little busy.” Sylvain rests a hand on the back of his neck and smiles sheepishly at Felix. “It’s a long story, you know?”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure it is.” Felix raises an eyebrow. But he doesn’t quite get a chance to finish his thought before Dimitri jumps into their conversation.

Dimitri gawks at Sylvain. “Wait, you went to The Culinary Institute of Garreg Mach? One of the best culinary schools in the _world_? _That_ Garreg Mach?”

Sylvain smiles at him and playfully holds up a peace sign. “Sure did.”

“Wow!” Dimitri beams at him. “That’s incredible!”

“What kind of friend are you if you don’t even know that?” Felix practically turns his nose up at Dimitri, who looks a little taken aback. “Didn’t know you were hanging around such careless people now, Sylvain.”

“Hey, it’s not his fault,” defends Sylvain quickly. “I just never told him.”

“Not even that! You lied to me!” Though Dimitri’s words seem hurt, his tone holds less venom and more confusion and curiosity. “You told me you went out of state—to attend the Kleiman Institute of Technology.”

“It’s not all a lie. I _did_ go to KIT.” Sylvain waits a beat. “Right after I transferred out of Garreg Mach.”

Attending the Kleiman Institute of Technology wasn’t quite as fun as attending a culinary school, but it did have many more upsides. For one, it let him evade having to inherit his father’s company. He didn’t want to have to take up managing and working at a successful chain restaurant that his father started, especially with all that his father has done to him. He wanted to cut away from his terrible childhood and start anew, and if that meant dropping out of culinary school to pursue a drastically different career, then he would do it.

Even if it meant losing touch with his best friend—and crush.

( _No_ , Sylvain reminds himself. _It’s better this way. Felix was stressed and studying so hard. I didn’t want to distract him any more than I already was. He didn’t have time to stress about me or how my stupid feelings would ruin our friendship. There’s no place in his heart for me anyway—just his career._ )

Dimitri chuckles. “You are always full of surprises, Sylvain.”

“Am I?” Sylvain shrugs his shoulders. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Surprises aren’t always a good thing.” Felix shakes his head.

“Oh! Here, before I forget.” Sylvain fishes his phone out of his pocket and opens up his contacts page. He hands his phone to Felix. “I got a new number a while back.”

Felix stares at the screen. “You did?” There’s something odd about his expression, but Felix immediately shuts it down, his stoic expression returning.

Sylvain feels a little bad. Did Felix try texting him or something? “Yeah. When I got this one, it didn’t transfer all the numbers over.” And thank God that it didn’t. Sylvain has a lot of exes that he would rather never think about again. “But go ahead and add yourself. Wouldn’t want to lose your number again.”

There’s a small pause in Sylvain’s world, like someone had hit pause on his life and he’s watching Felix stare down at the phone. Like he’s said something extremely, incredibly, unbearably, excruciatingly risky. He supposes in a way that he did. He and Felix haven’t spoken since Garreg Mach, and their last conversation wasn’t exactly the friendliest, considering how upset Felix had seemed that he was leaving to pursue another career. Sylvain still doesn’t understand what had set Felix off, but he seems a lot more mellow now—other than the fact that he’s willing to fight people over their opinions of his food, of course.

But the world waits for no one, especially not Sylvain. Sylvain watches as Felix, without a beat of hesitation, gives a noncommittal hum and types his number into Sylvain’s phone. He hands it back, and Sylvain sends Felix a text. He waits a beat, waiting to hear a vibration or a ringtone, but Felix seems to know what Sylvain is waiting on.

“My phone’s in the locker rooms. But the number I put in your phone is right.” Felix rolls his eyes. “Anyway. You. Sylvain. Your taste in food is dubious at best—shit at worst.”

“You hurt me, Felix! And you’re insulting yourself too, you know.” Sylvain smiles at Felix, who just rolls his eyes. “But, I did like the food. I like your cooking. I’ve always liked it.”

( _Is that a little too on-the-nose?_ Sylvain wonders. _Am I making things weird?_ )

“Visit more often.” Felix’s response is blunt, deadpan, and almost annoyed—but Sylvain knows he means nothing mean by it. “I’ll make food the way you like.”

“What?” Sylvain chuckles, “Come on, I told you I like your cooking. I’m not trying to flatter you.”

“Yeah, like you don’t try to flatter everyone you ever meet.” Sylvain gives Felix an exaggerated gasp, his hand pressing against his chest.

“Ouch, buddy! How rude!”

“I’m only telling the truth. You clearly didn’t like what you got tonight.”

“I did! I liked it, really! Ask Dima!” Felix, pointedly, does not ask Dima. “It was just missing something.” He pauses a beat. “Aw, Fe, are you getting self-conscious?” He grins at him, coy, foxlike—the type of smile that typically gets him into trouble. “Didn’t take you as the shy type.”

Almost immediately, as if on cue, Felix snaps at him, “Shut up.” Felix glares at him, but he eventually rolls his eyes. “I mean it. I’ll make food you like. So just come over.”

Even though there’s a sharp tug in his chest, like the fear that he’ll fall too deep for Felix once again is reigniting, Sylvain can’t turn down an offer to eat gourmet food and see his childhood best friend more often. Well, his wallet might have something to say about that, but Sylvain isn’t thinking about his wallet right now. He’s thinking about the pretty, dark-haired chef standing in front of him.

“What? Really? You’d do that just for me?” Sylvain perks up. “You do care about me, huh, Fe?”

Felix shoots him a flat look before saying, “Sure.” Then, he looks back to the kitchen doors and sighs. His expression softens a little as he looks back at Sylvain, the seemingly ever-present crease between his eyebrows fading as a tiny smile plasters itself onto Felix’s face. “Alright, I have to get back to work now, but enjoy your meal, Sylvain.”

“Oh. Yeah! Of course! Don’t let me keep you from doing your job.” Sylvain waves at him. “See you around, Felix.”

Dimitri silently watches as Sylvain’s cheeks heat up to a soft pink the slightest bit and how his hands tremble the slightest bit as he tousles his own hair. He notes the way that Sylvain seems to wilt when Felix says that he needs to leave. He doesn’t miss how Sylvain looks dazed, even after Felix leaves.

And he certainly doesn’t miss how Felix had been eyeing Sylvain, how he had looked so disapprovingly at Dimitri, how he had calmed down so drastically after recognizing Sylvain.

Dimitri may be oblivious to a lot of things—or so Sylvain says—but he knows these signs when he sees them. He wonders if he should invite Sylvain to eat at The Lone Wolf more often, especially if it means getting to see Sylvain get so happy. Especially after Sylvain, after a night of drinking, had confided in Dimitri that he feels a little lonely at times and that he wishes that he could be with someone without hurting them or them hurting him.

-

Back at home, Sylvain tries not to burn with embarrassment as he thinks back to his experiences at The Lone Wolf. Had he been too obvious? He did feel like he went a little over-the-top, especially when he insisted to Dimitri that he wanted to pay the tip and paid quite a bit. Later that night, Felix had sent him a text scolding him about recklessly spending money, but he had thanked him by the end of the text because Bernadetta had seemed so ecstatic about the large tip. 

Oh well. Sylvain figures that that night was hectic for both him and Felix, especially considering the nature of their reunion for the first time in literal years. Felix is sure not to think too much of it, right? He'd probably overlook it as Sylvain being friendly and stuff, right?

Either way, it's undeniable that writing this review for The Lone Wolf is going to be the most fun that Sylvain's had in a while.


	2. *felix voice* constructive criticism only.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reviews are in! Felix's restaurant is an absolute banger! It gets a perfect 100% ranking from Sylvain and co.!
> 
> ...
> 
> Or does it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how to write a food review, nevertheless a review on an entire restaurant. All I hope is that I managed to capture a bit of Sylvain in his review! Also I don't have any pictures to embed for Sylvain's review nor any idea how to embed photos so just use your imagination. orz My apologies if it breaks the immersion ^^;;
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**The Lone Wolf, Faerghus**   
  
**Dima’s review: 5/5 stars (He also said to put a little smiley face or a thumbs up or something in his rating. Use your imagination.)**

**My review: 4.9/5 stars.**

**The other day, Dimitri found out about this really nice restaurant called The Lone Wolf. He told me that it was founded by some big-shot chef and that he would love to give it a try since he’s heard a lot of good stuff about it so, of course, we went.**

**It was absolutely packed when we went, but Dima made reservations (thank God, and thank you, Dima) so we didn’t have to wait in this massive line. They had a pretty efficient system for queuing people and taking in those who had reservations.**

**If there’s anything you take away from this review, it’s that you should definitely consider making reservations.**

**Oh, and that you should do some research before going to eat somewhere for the first time.**

**See, I didn’t do that this time around because I assumed Dimitri did some research himself and trusted him not to send us straight to the hospital for food poisoning. Honestly, it was a little freaky trying to get there because we didn’t know what the building looked like and, given how it’s literally out in the middle of nowhere, I had no guarantee that where we were going to was even a restaurant.**

**(Hey, Dima. If you’re reading this, maybe leave the research to yours truly next time.** **Or at least be a little more thorough, buddy.)**

**Like I said, it’s in the middle of nowhere. The nearest buildings were literally half-finished hotels and random one-stop gas stations, and there was just a whole bunch of nothing and nature. I guess, it fits the theme of a “lone wolf,” but it was really jarring to see such a pretty building with all these lights and cars in a random clearing in the woods. Don’t get me wrong though. It was a stunning view.**

**The Lone Wolf was founded by Felix Fraldarius, an alumnus of the Culinary Institute of Garreg Mach. You may recognize him from a few episodes of a few cooking shows that he’s been on. Or maybe you just recognize his name because he’s quite famous for his culinary talent. He’s won quite a few awards and, at this point, has reached the level of worldwide recognition.**

**He’s also really scary when he gets mad, and I’m sure you all know that already. But I’ll get to that later.**

**The inside is very beautiful—well-furnished and fancy. Just what you’d expect from such a reputable restaurant made by a reputable chef. I mean, just look at that chandelier! And the décor, the menu, the _everything_. Even the way that they plated the foods. **

**It’s like something straight out of a cartoon’s depiction of a professional, “fancy” restaurant. Or maybe like something out of _Ratatouille._ Either way, it all looks undeniably beautiful. **

**The menu’s got a wide variety of delicious appetizers. Honestly, I was a little dazed when I looked at it. There was so much to pick from, and I had no idea which to pick. You would think that I would get used to looking through menus, but picking what you want on a new menu every time you go to a restaurant is still a little nightmarish.**

**Dimitri and I both ordered the same appetizer, which is the cheesy Verona stew. (See the picture? It looks good, don't you think? Well, you're right because it was pretty _damn_ good.) As you’d expect, when we were looking over the menu, Dimitri saw the word “cheese” and just went nuts, kind of in that same way that your pets probably do when they see you going within a six foot radius of wherever you keep their favorite treats. To be fair, his excitement ended up being pretty reasonable.**

**The Verona stew was—and I quote—“one of the best things [Dima] has ever eaten.” He said that he could taste a lot of the ingredients, including the cheese (of course) and the butternut squash as well as some others. He also said that he really enjoyed the sweet taste and the type of cheese that was used.**

**Look, I’ve known this man for _years_ and I don't think I've ever seen him go off about food like this. He was completely and utterly _loving_ it.**

**I liked it a lot too. Just not as much as he did. The thing was that it was just a little bland. I added salt, and it was a little better, but it was still missing something. It makes sense that Dimitri thought it was just perfect though, considering that it’s recommended not to add too much salt to his foods for his hypogeusia.**

**Still really good. Had a nice, sweet aftertaste and a mellow, sweet taste. Absolutely mouthwatering. It’s something you’d think about eating after a cold, hard day at work. Even thinking about it now makes me kind of hungry, actually.**

**Then, for our main courses, I ordered the two-fish sauté, and Dima ordered the cheese gratin. (Again, a cheesy dish. I'm sure you all get the pattern.)**

**Dima said that this one had a really unique flavor that he’s never had. The sauce looked pretty good—and it was pretty good. (I swiped a bit when you weren’t looking. Sorry, Dima. Just looked real tempting.) It’s got a nice fruity taste, which is a great contrast to the rich chicken. The macaroni was a nice touch. Also, it had a lot of cheese, which probably explains why Dimitri was so over the moon about it.**

**The two-fish sauté was fantastic. It’s actually one of my favorite dishes ever. It also reminded me a lot of my childhood. I used to eat it a lot with my family and my close childhood friends—and this is really turning into _Ratatouille_ , isn’t it? Oops. Either way, it was just indescribably _good._ I know that fish isn’t everyone’s favorite, but this dish was just delectable, delicious, divine—whatever pretentious food word you want to use. If you’re willing to try some fish, definitely give this dish a shot.**

**If you do, you might want to have a salt shaker nearby. This was also just a touch bland. And when I mean a touch, I mean like _a touch._ I just barely salted my food—I felt like I dropped two grains of salt on my food—and it tasted a little bit better.**

**Now, for my favorite part of any meal and my favorite part of this story in particular: dessert.**

**Dimitri and I both got the peach sorbet. Dimitri, again, loved this dessert. I’m personally a huge fan of peach sorbet, but Dimitri ended up liking this dessert way more than I did. Why? Again, I thought that something was missing.**

**Funnily enough, my bellyaching about the food being missing ended up dragging out none other than Felix Fraldarius. He gave me quite an earful and looked like he startled Dimitri quite a bit. He’s really scary when he’s mad. You’d have thought that I personally insulted his family and spat on his face from how hard he slammed through the kitchen doors.**

**It’s all good though. I’ve seen a few of the clips on YouTube of him popping off on some of the cooking shows he’s been on, and his grouchy side isn’t anything new to anyone it seems. Especially to me. I went to Garreg Mach with this guy. Hell, he was my best friend growing up.**

**Very, _very_ talented chef. Stubborn as hell, kind of mean at times, but a great guy nonetheless.**

**If you’re reading this, Felix, hi. Also, when are you going to give me my headphones back? (Yes, it’s been almost five years. Yes, I remembered. And yes, I’m _that_ petty. They were a really quality brand, you know.)**

**In the end, our trip to The Lone Wolf was an enjoyable one. It was a beautiful place with stellar service. Dimitri thought that this was the best place we’ve ever been too, considering that he tasted a _lot_ of good stuff despite his hypogeusia. I think that it’s easily the best place we’ve visited too, but it could be just a _little bit_ better.**

**Would definitely recommend. But make sure it’s within your budget first. It can be quite pricey since it's made by such an esteemed and talented chef. I really feel like it's worth the money though.**

**-SJG**

-

As Felix does his rounds, preparing the kitchen and the restaurant for later that night, he finds most of his employees out in the dining area, huddled around something and murmuring. Odd. Usually, everyone is just as busy as he is, even if he doesn’t particularly try to dump all sorts of responsibilities on his workers.

Felix walks over to the employees and plants a hand on his hip, an eyebrow raised.

“What’s going on around here?” he deadpans, and a few of his employees jump up. They all seem to exchange shocked and anxious looks. Felix narrows his eyes. Something’s up.

“Oh, Felix! Hey!” Annette, ever the brave but kind soul, hops up from the center of the huddle and thrusts her phone screen in his face. “Check it out! We had a food reviewer drop by, and he wrote an article about us!”

Felix wrinkles his nose. Another food critic? He’s had enough of listening to flowery words and pretentious descriptions of his food. It’s all ever the same—kind words of praise that are almost _too_ kind. It’s almost like food critics are tiptoeing around him, terrified of invoking his infamous wrath—or, at the very least, terrified of annoying him. He supposes it’s understandable since he does hate having to waste time to have to read reviews when he just wants to run his business and perfect his cooking.

“It’s just another critic.” His curt tone sends a small wave of apprehension through the room, one that he can see and practically feel, and Felix tries to ignore his frustration at himself for sounding so irate. He isn’t particularly trying to sound this way, but it just happens. “Don’t care.”

“No, no. Not a critic,” corrects Annette, entirely and impressively unfazed by his tone, “It’s a _reviewer_. Apparently, he’s been writing this really neat series about different restaurants—”

“Critics do just about the same thing.” Annette pouts at him.

“It’s a very fun read.” Mercedes, still looking a little pale from the cold that had plagued her for the past couple of days, but looking unfairly graceful and poised, stands up from where she had been sitting beside Annette. Gently plucking the phone from Annette’s hands, slowly as if waiting for Annette to object—but Annette gestures at her to take it with a small grin—Mercedes sets it in Felix’s hands and smiles at him, curling his hand around the phone. “He has a very interesting way of describing things! And it seems he knows you personally, if what he writes about you is true!”

Felix blinks. “Me?” That’s new. His other food critics have only ever been hellbent on critiquing the food, probably because they were too terrified to comment on him as a person really. Felix doesn’t mind. He knows how he comes off to others. He isn’t stupid.

He looks down at the phone screen and begins reading. To his surprise, he recognizes this story—how could he? It’s when Sylvain—stupid, unforgettable Sylvain, after years and years of haunting Felix’s mind like a ghost—had shown up at his restaurant. Seeing the photos of his restaurant and the initials at the end of the article only solidify his thoughts. This is most definitely something Sylvain wrote.

 _Asshole_ , he thinks. _He only gave me a 4.9 out of 5 because he knew it’d piss me off._ He pauses. _Ah, and he got me. He knows me too well. Okay, but in my defense, what kind of killjoy leaves a 4.9 rating? Just round up to a 5, you stingy bastard._

"I’ve never seen anyone picky enough to leave a 4.9.” Annette takes her phone out of Felix’s hands. “Weirdly specific! But I’ve seen decimal points in ratings before. Nothing new.” She beams at Felix. “Well, looks like we have some work to do if we want to bump up that rating, don’t you think?”

Felix feels his lips curling down into a deeper frown. “Only an utter idiot would think that my cooking is worth only 4.9 stars.” Felix turns his nose up and turns abruptly on his heel, his back to his employees. “Anyway, we have a busy night tonight. Enough sitting around.” With that air of finality, the group of employees slowly disperses, though the feeling of excitement and anxiety—the feeling of seeing a seemingly genuine criticism and seeing Felix so _determined_ rather than bored with his job—makes it so that the clamor and chatter never dies down.

Annette sighs and looks down at her phone.

“Oh dear. That was certainly a deep sigh. Is something wrong?”

“Mercie, I missed my chance to get an autograph from both Dimitri and Sylvain!” she laments, leaning forward on the table she’s sitting at. She slowly slumps over until her forehead meets the wood of the table with a soft _thump_. “I’ve been keeping up with this blog for so long! I’ve always wanted to talk to them.”

Mercedes chuckles warmly and places a hand on Annette’s shoulder. Annette leans in against her, still sulking. “Oh, cheer up, Annie! You’ll have another chance to get that autograph!”

"D'ya really think so?” Annette turns her gaze up at Mercedes, who only nods at her with that kind, motherly smile she is practically known for.

Mercedes laughs again and looks up, watching as Felix barks out orders and looks down at his phone with a deep-set scowl—one that looks sterner than usual. While the other employees get to cleaning and setting up the food and the restaurant, Felix stays hovering over a table with his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows furrowed, his phone in his hands as he thumbs out what seems to be a text. Mercedes doesn't miss Felix's nervous ticks—the way he's tapping his foot and biting the inside of his cheek and picking at his fingers when he's not typing; she doesn't miss the flush softly painting his cheeks. 

Annette follows Mercedes’s gaze, but confused, she tugs at Mercedes’s shirt sleeve and asks what she’s looking at.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mercedes reassures her, her voice quieter, softer, warmer—a bit like the desserts she makes. She smiles. “I just have a feeling that we’re going to be seeing them again sometime soon."

-

Sylvain gets a text from Felix the day after his review goes live. He’s expecting it because he _did_ review Felix’s restaurant, after all, but at the same time, he isn’t entirely sure what he’s expecting. Was he expecting an angry Felix, frustrated with his pickiness? Was he expecting a surprised Felix, unsuspecting of a review of his restaurant? Was he expecting a lawsuit for the defamation of Felix and The Lone Wolf because he hated the review so much?

His reviews have always gotten quite a bit of attention, especially given that Dimitri, one of the world’s biggest and most beloved celebrities, is the star of it. Yet, for some reason, this article seems to be dragging in more comments and shares than usual. Sure, there’s all sorts of people arguing in the comments, laughing along with his little verbal jabs and jokes, giving out advice and recommendations—it’s all things that he’s accustomed to from doing this for so long—but there’s still a startling amount of attention he’s gotten. Every time he refreshes the page, he swears he gets another ten comments or so. It’s insane.

However, the thing that really startles him the most is Felix’s text. It’s a mere three words and a time.

 _‘Lone Wolf. Tomorrow. 8 pm,’_ reads the text. Sylvain can practically hear Felix’s deadpan delivery, can practically see the tired look on his face, can practically smell the spices and oil from the kitchen of The Lone Wolf.

It gets his point across, but Sylvain would really kill for some context. Nonetheless, he knows that Felix has a rhyme and reason for everything that he does so he accepts the text. After checking his schedule for tomorrow night at 8, he texts back.

 _‘Sure,_ ’ Sylvain replies, _‘but what’s the occasion? And can I bring Dimitri?’_

Felix hadn’t given an answer to that, but his phone certainly had— _read at 10:06 pm_. Sylvain takes that as an ‘I’m not telling you’ for the first question and a ‘no’ to the question about Dimitri.

Sylvain tries to think of what Felix could possible want from him—is it his birthday? Is it Felix’s? Is Felix going to sue him face-to-face for defamation? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone’s asked him to meet under the guise of something nice and great but with a pending lawsuit waiting for him when they met. Sylvain wonders if he should start rehearsing apologies.

But it’s Felix. He knows Felix, and Felix knows him—Felix wouldn’t be terribly offended by his review, and Sylvain, who thinks that he hadn’t written anything too hurtful, actually didn’t mean anything that could be taken too negatively that he had written down. He meant it as a good-natured joke.

Perhaps making such jokes, after years of separation and distance between them, wasn’t the wisest idea. That’s a fair thing to think. Sylvain didn’t intend to offend. He just meant to make a few jokes. He thought that it would have been okay, especially considering that everyone seems to think Felix is super crabby anyway. He, himself, doesn’t think Felix’s general disposition is that bad—it’s a little charming in its own little way—but maybe he seemed like he was piling onto the bad press that Felix’s temper seems to have racked up already. Maybe Felix thought that Sylvain was with everyone else, was against him.

Sylvain would never do that. He knows, deep in his beat and battered heart, that he would side by Felix no matter what. He’s known this since they were kids.

Hopefully, Felix knows this too.

-

Sylvain feels like he’s been sitting in his car, waiting for the clock to hit exactly 8 pm before he steps foot into the restaurant. He’s oddly anxious to see Felix, and realistically, he knows he doesn’t need to be, but it’s just that the man hadn’t given him any context about what this was about, which is never a good thing when being called in to meet someone. It doesn’t help that Sylvain’s repressed feelings of love are having a field day in his chest, running laps around his racing heart.

Felix hadn’t been responding to any of his texts. At first, he had been leaving Sylvain on read, but then, he stopped reading the messages altogether. The latter part he understands since Felix himself had explained that he doesn’t have his phone on him while he’s working; he’s just confused about what this is all about.

When the clock finally hits 8 pm, Sylvain takes a deep breath and clambers out of his car, heading to The Lone Wolf’s front door. He stands in the line, head ducked a bit as he looks down at his phone. He had told Dimitri about the texts, piquing the celebrity’s interest. Dimitri is asking about what’s happening, but Sylvain can’t really say much. Nothing’s happened after all.

"Oh! Mr. Gautier?”

Sylvain looks up and sees the ginger-haired waitress from the other night, the one that was trying to disengage Felix from what could have been a scandal of some sort. She’s holding a tray of food and has a stack of menus neatly tucked under her arm. She brightens when he looks up and smiles at her.

“Ah! It is you! Okay, Felix said that you’d be coming by around now! If you could follow me, I can bring you to a table.”

“That’d be great, thanks.” Sylvain steps out of the line and follows the waitress, ignoring the pointed or curious looks he gets from other patrons who are waiting in the line.

“God, this is so cool,” she gushes over her shoulder at Sylvain as they walk past a few tables. “I really love your series, and it’s so wild that you came by and reviewed The Lone Wolf! It’s a really interesting read! Um, if it isn’t too much trouble, could I get an autograph from you? I didn’t have a chance to ask for one before.”

“Hm? Oh, sure, sure! It’s no sweat. It’s nice to see that my dumb project makes people happy, you know?” Sylvain chuckles.

“Yeah! I’m a real big fan!” The waitress sets the tray down at a couple’s table and smiles politely at them, telling them to give her a call if they need anything before turning her gaze towards Sylvain. “But really, that review was so fun to read! I shared it with everyone who works here! Oh, you should have seen Felix’s face!” She snickers and sets stack of menus down in a basket, where other menus are. Sylvain figures that it’s from tables where customers had finished their meals.

 _Felix’s face? What kind of face was he making?_ Sylvain lightly bites his lower lip. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but the waitress stops him and sets him down at a table near the kitchen.

“What do you want to drink?” she asks, taking out a pen and a pad of paper.

“Huh? Uh, water is fine.” Sylvain flicks his gaze up at the waitress’s nametag. She smiles at him.

“Oh! I didn’t tell you my name! I’m Annette. Nice to meet you!”

“Nice to meet you, Annette.” He quickly scribbles his name down on the notepad and writes Annette a small message, thanking her for being a fan. When he hands the paper back to her, she looks at it briefly with a grin and puts it in her pocket.

“Neat! Thank you so much! Next, I’m hoping that I can get one from Dimitri!”

Sylvain smiles at her. “He really likes the food here. He’ll probably drop by again so you’ll get your chance eventually.”

Annette pumps the air with her fist. “Yes! That’s great to hear!” She pauses. “Oh, I’ll go tell Felix you’re here! I’ll be back with your water in a second! If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask!”

Annette hurries into the employee-only doors. It’s then that Sylvain realizes that he doesn’t even have a menu. Oh well. Annette said that she’d be back with his water so he could probably just let her know that he needs a menu then.

Only Annette doesn’t come back to serve him. He sees her slip out of the kitchen with some other orders, but she doesn’t seem to come back to him.

Instead, Felix does.

Shortly after Annette left him at the table, Felix pushes the doors to the kitchen with his back, his arms holding with a tray of food and a glass of water. His eyes briefly scan over the restaurant before landing on Sylvain. He then makes his way to Sylvain’s table, and Sylvain can’t help but to smile at him.

“Hey, Felix!”

Felix sets the tray and the glass down in front of him. “Eat.” Felix, now standing beside him, crosses his arms.

Is this some sort of weird punishment? Sylvain stifles his laugh at Felix’s bluntness despite how he doesn’t look intimidating at all with the little chef hat and the cute apron on. Any apprehension he had prior to now seems to fade away. “Um, I didn’t order this. I actually didn’t order anything. I didn’t get a menu.”

“I know.” Felix doesn’t move, doesn’t bat an eye. It's like he's telling him that the sky's blue or that kitchen knives are sharp and used for cooking. “I told Annette that you didn’t need one.”

Sylvain lifts an eyebrow and looks down at the food. “But you still want me to eat this?”

“Yeah.”

Sylvain’s stomach growls the longer he waits. The meal in front of him smells incredible, and the longer that he waits, he hungrier he feels.

Wait. He feels like he’s seen this exact meal before. It was something that he ate a lot at Felix’s house when they were young. It’s awfully nostalgic. It’s also one of Sylvain’s favorite meals. Just like the two fish sauté, the food’s not only delicious, but it feels Sylvain with warm and happy memories of Felix—feeling invincible, feeling euphoric, feeling safe and even loved. _Food is such a fucking blessing,_ Sylvain thinks.

“Was this even on the menu?” Sylvain picks up a fork. “I don’t think I saw this when I came here.” _If I saw this_ , _I don’t know if I would have picked the two fish sauté._

There’s a beat of hesitation before Felix replies, “Just try it. It’s not important.”

Sylvain beams. “Oh, am I testing like a new menu item or something?” He grins. “Aw, Felix, you’re giving _me_ exclusive access, even though you said that my taste in food is bad? That’s so sweet of you.”

“Sure.”

“What do you mean ‘sure’?”

“It means ‘sure.’ Now hurry up.”

“Alright, alright. Geez.” Sylvain chuckles and holds the food up in front of his mouth before looking up at Felix, who is attentively watching with an oddly open look. His expression shuts down and resumes its normal scowl when he notices Sylvain staring back at him.

“What?”

“What’s with this pressure?” Sylvain jokes as he takes a bite of his food. “I can’t eat in peace with you hovering over my shoulder like that, Felix.”

Felix rolls his eyes a little but moves. He sits in the empty seat across from Sylvain with a small sigh and watches him. It’s not any less unsettling and uncomfortable, but Sylvain takes a little solace in that Felix, who probably works on his feet all day, can take a little break.

Felix says nothing as Sylvain eats, but Sylvain isn’t all that anxious anymore. If anything, this kind of feels familiar. Sitting in his and Felix’s shared apartment on campus at Garreg Mach, trying one of Felix’s dishes while Felix waits in anticipation for his opinion. Sure, there are a ton of people around him and there are a bunch of decorations in this restaurant that his college self would never have even imagined being wealthy enough to be near, but it still feels familiar. Sylvain likes this feeling, even if it makes him a little sad at how things have turned up—he’s weirdly distant from Felix, unsure of how one of his favorite people on the planet even really feels about him, and he’s sitting in a work setting that he would have been able to work at, had he continued attending Garreg Mach.

But even with years and some emotional distance between them, they’re so _close_. Sylvain’s eyes, once focused on the food, linger on Felix—on how short his hair is, on how tired his eyes are, on how his lips are drawn into a small frown. Time may not have been nice to Sylvain’s unrequited feelings, sending him down a few questionable paths in life, but it has been terribly generous to Felix. He looks stunning, just as he had all those years ago.

 _I wish we were closer,_ Sylvain thinks. _I wish I could be your best friend again without making things complicated and awkward. I’m sorry things are like this._

Felix’s words pull him out of his thoughts. “You’re staring.” Sylvain’s traitorous heart skips a beat when Felix meets his gaze. “What is it?”

“Hm?” Sylvain blinks. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

“No, I’m serious! I’m good. Just thinking.”

Felix doesn’t say anything for a second, really staring at Sylvain with this oddly intense look—Sylvain isn’t really sure what to make of it or what Felix is thinking. He hasn’t really seen this kind of expression on Felix’s face in a while. He almost looks angry. Its meaning flies right over his head, but he doesn’t get a chance to ask about it because Felix simply sighs, shakes his head, and says, “The food—thoughts?” in a clear attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere.

Sylvain hasn’t even really been thinking about his food. While he was eating, his mind has been too fixated on the man in front of him to really register what’s going into his mouth. All he knows is that it’s really good. He takes another few bites and really savors them, but he can’t find much to say about it. It’s just about perfect, actually. But Felix probably doesn’t want flattery.

“I think it’s really good. I mean, I can taste that you’ve added a bit of salt,” Sylvain starts with a smile, and Felix gives a terse nod, “and I think you added a few more spices.”

Felix nods again.

Sylvain hesitates before continuing. “But—”

“But?” Felix narrows his eyes.

“Could be a little spicier.” Sylvain takes another bite of his dumpling, as if to test his thoughts. He nods to himself. “Yeah. I think this dango could be spicier.”

When Felix doesn’t respond, Sylvain takes it upon himself to try and prompt him to answer, to try and rid Felix’s face of that stern frown. What ends up happening is Sylvain rambling like an idiot.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s incredible—it really is. I actually like this better than the two-fish sauté I had with Dimitri. I just really feel like if you made this a little bit spicier, it would be perfect, but, of course, that’s just my opinion. I’m sure there are people out there who would want this to be less spicy.” He stops himself from going on.

“I see.”

Sylvain cocks his head.

“So what would you rate this?”

“Hmm?”

“On a scale of one to five.”

Then it clicks. Honestly, Sylvain is ashamed that it took this long for him to realize what was happening, but in his defense, he was busy thinking about Felix rather than his silly review.

“Oh. _Oh._ I see what’s going on here. This is about my review, isn’t it?” Sylvain laughs when Felix doesn’t reply, instead sporting a near childish pout. Sylvain lets himself laugh a little longer before putting on a slightly more serious front. “Hey, I’m sorry my review got on your nerves. I didn’t mean to offend you with my rating. I really do like your cooking. If you want, I can go back and change it to be a little more, y’know—”

“No.” Felix crosses his arms. “It’s fine. I’m not offended, and I don’t need your pity. Don’t change your review.” He looks down at the plate in front of Sylvain. “I don’t give a shit about what you wrote.”

“Ouch, Felix. That’s a little mean, don’t you think?” Sylvain smiles for him anyway. He’s not upset. “No, but really. If this whole thing is stressing you out that much, I’d be more than happy to change it.”

“I said I don’t need your pity. Don’t change your review. I can’t stand people who are indecisive liars who just want to appease someone.” Felix glares at Sylvain. “I know you’re not like that. So don’t be fake and don’t change it.” Felix stands up and starts to tidy up Sylvain’s empty plate. He picks up the tray and stands up out of his seat.

Sylvain feels an odd feeling of guilt and apprehension twisting his insides in knots. Before Felix can leave, he quickly blurts out, “Felix, you might be taking this a little too seriously. That review isn’t anything that people should use as a tool to judge you or your restaurant, and I’m sorry if I’ve encouraged people to think it is. It’s really nothing you should stress yourself or your workers about—I don’t want to cause your cooks or your waitresses any problems, especially considering how terrified Bernadetta looked of you. If it really upsets you, tell me. I can take it down. I don’t mind. And like I said, I really do enjoy your cooking.”

Felix turns to face him. “Sylvain,” he says slowly, “I know it’s not that serious. I’m not upset.” His lips quirk up slightly, in the smallest of smirks. “And like _I_ said, I don’t give a shit about what you wrote. But I _am_ going to make you eat your words.”

Sylvain stares at Felix, bewildered. He’s sure he looks ridiculous with his eyes wide and his mouth agape, but he is at a complete and utter loss for words, other than the meek, “What?” that escapes his lips.

“I’m going to make you admit that my food is the best—that I’m the best cook you’ve ever eaten from.” With that, Felix turns around. His back facing Sylvain, he tells the shocked redhead, “It’s on the house,” and heads back towards the kitchen without another word.

Sylvain can only sit there in shock at that whole interaction. Felix wasn’t upset with him at all; he was seeking genuine criticism. It also seems that he was simply taking Sylvain’s review as a challenge, rather than an insult. It’s better that way, but this certainly wasn’t what Sylvain was expecting. It’s actually kind of exciting, seeing that spark of competitiveness in Felix’s eyes and seeing that little heart-melting smarmy smirk.

For some reason, Sylvain feels intrigued, feels inspired. He wants to tease Felix, wants to be a hard nut to crack as Felix always has—he can frustrate Felix with his mischief and playful pickiness, and Felix can get a fun cooking exercise and challenge out of this. It’s an interesting subversion of their usual roles. Plus, it gives Sylvain an excuse to act more insufferable. Is there anything better?

(Well, it’s also a major plus that Sylvain can spend some more time with Felix, but he refuses to admit that to anyone. At least, he won’t admit it aloud.)

The only downside to this is that Sylvain didn’t even get the chance to insist on paying for the meal. He’s pretty sure that Felix will refuse to take money or let Annette charge him for this meal so instead, he decides that he’ll leave a nice “tip.”

Grabbing a spare receipt from his pocket and asking a waitress to borrow a pen, he scribbles out a note thanking Felix for the meal and informing him that he’s not paying for a meal; he’s leaving a tip. He isn’t sure how much the meal is worth, but he gives a reasonable estimate and leaves the money on the table for Annette.

Sure, he gets a message calling him stupid for not taking advantage of a free gourmet meal from Felix later, but he knows that Felix worked hard on the meal, given how he was acting and how fast the meal came out. He simply laughs off the text with a good-natured smile and texts Felix that he looks forward to when he puts the super-spicy dango dish on his menu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the plot really begins! :^) I'm really into the part of Sylvain and Felix's relationship where they're actually quite competitive, and I know there's really not a "competitive" part here for Sylvain, but I think that he'd thoroughly enjoy frustrating Felix. I'm excited to write the rest of this fic, but I do hope that Felix's motivations seem clear because I don't quite think I transitioned to that part very well ^^;;
> 
> But thank you for reading and I hope you stay tuned! :D


	3. jealousy is a disease bitch get well soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain catches up with Felix and comes to the devastating conclusion that Felix isn't single. 
> 
> Well, at least he makes a new friend.

The next couple of days are rather mundane, easily bleeding into one another. Sylvain goes to work, checks through the comments on his review, and studies up on unique restaurants nearby. Rinse and repeat, day in and day out. The days are all so similar, in fact, that before Sylvain knows it, it’s been almost two weeks since he’d last seen Felix at the Lone Wolf.

It’s been nearly two weeks, and he misses seeing his friend, but he isn’t worried. After all, Felix has been texting him throughout the days—actually, Sylvain’s been the one texting him rather than the other way around since Felix doesn’t tend to start the conversations. He’s always been like that anyway.

Either way, they’ve been regularly texting when they’re both not at work.

(Sylvain may or may not be entirely honest when he’s telling Felix that he has time to text because he’s usually burning through time at work, but Felix doesn’t need to know that.)

It’s his best friend. Of course Sylvain is happy to catch up with him and talk, even if it’s about stupid things like the

Sylvain’s relieved that not much had changed with Felix. His interests still seem to be the same—cooking, working out, meat, and cats, though he wouldn’t admit that one outright no matter how much Sylvain prodded at him and egged him on. His home life seems to be the same too; Felix still avoids his father, still spends most of his time perfecting his cooking, still lives alone. That last point, embarrassingly enough, is what relieves Sylvain the most, even though it isn’t a surefire way of knowing if Felix is single or not.

 _But to be fair, this is_ Felix _so I can assume that he probably is_ , Sylvain reminds himself. Felix never had romantic pursuits get in the way of his true goals; hell, even when Felix was little, he’s been like that, refusing to let anything get between him and his goals if he can help it. Nothing would get in his way of becoming the best—not idle conversation, not girls, not boys. He was always intense, always focused, always a touch standoffish. Sylvain knows this.

The thing is, Felix is successful now. Wildly successful. He’s made it onto national television. He’s a name known throughout the world as one of the best chefs. He’s got his own restaurant, a bunch of brand deals, and who knows what else. So has he reached his goal? Has he reached the top and claimed his title as the best? Is he satisfied?

Amongst all this, Sylvain wonders what Felix’s stance on relationships are like now. Would he be willing to give dating a chance at last? What kind of person would he be into? Does Sylvain stand a chance? Has he ever stood a chance?

No, Sylvain doesn’t want to think about that. It’s best not to be too hopeful; it’s best not to dwell on these kinds of thoughts, especially considering that Sylvain made his mind up all those years ago to stay out of Felix’s life romantically so he wouldn’t be a distraction, so he wouldn’t wreck their friendship.

(No matter how hard he tries to shake them away, thoughts of Felix still manage to sneak into his life. While he’s cooking eggs, he can see Felix clicking his tongue and taking the spatula from him, his eyes lidded in playful annoyance despite a small smile on his face. While he’s sitting by himself on his couch, he can imagine Felix sitting with him—sometimes pressed up against his side, sometimes wrapped in blankets in the other corner on the couch. His embarrassing thoughts haunt him and wrap his emotions around their little fingers, playing him like a clumsy, love-stricken puppet.)

Felix seems curious about Sylvain’s life too. To anyone else, his short replies may seem like disinterest or curtness, like awkward polite conversation; but Sylvain still remembers Felix’s little quirks, still knows Felix’s texting habits. Felix asks about Sylvain’s family life, which Sylvain manages to give his standard satisfactory answer to— _yeah, they’re fine as always_. Felix gets the hint and switches the topic, but Sylvain can tell he isn’t very pleased with that response.

He subtly asks about Sylvain’s work, about what he’s been doing during the past five years, about what he likes now. Sylvain’s happy to tell him. Just like if they were sitting in person and having a conversation, Sylvain does a lot of the talking, but Felix still throws in a few of his opinions, a few cheeky one-liners, a few stories of his own.

It may have been years since they last spoke or even seen each other, but it’s like their friendship hadn’t deteriorated a single bit. Conversation is easy for them and often lasts hours and hours, even if it’s staggered to fit around work schedules.

Sylvain can’t help but to think that he might be doing something wrong. Chatting with Felix like this is really igniting these small feelings again, and Sylvain does his best to shut them out. Yearning burns through him, leaving his skin hot and his chest tight. His heart skips and jitters, and his thoughts always wander back to Felix, as they did when he was Felix’s dormmate in college.

But he promised himself that he wouldn’t jeopardize this friendship. God, if Felix were to somehow find out about any of these—if he were to show even the slightest bit of discomfort in their friendship—Sylvain doesn’t know what he would do. He just knows that what’s left of his long battered and bruised heart would finally collapse in on itself.

There’s no way he’ll let that happen. Besides, just as Felix has been working his entire life to become perfect at cooking, Sylvain’s perfected his skill of hiding his true self by now.

So Sylvain bottles up his feelings as he’s always done.

-

When Felix’s next text inviting Sylvain to come to the Lone Wolf comes around, he first asks if Sylvain had plans—to which Sylvain responds that he’s practically always free if it means free food and hanging out with a close friend—then tells him a day and a time. Sylvain marks his calendar and prepares for some fun.

This time around, Sylvain’s better prepared for this kind of invitation. He’s not worried like he was the first time when he thought he offended Felix with his review. He knows a little more of what to expect. Texting him also helped to break down some of the uncertainty between them so Sylvain’s more comfortable being more like himself rather than someone polite and stiffly awkward.

When Sylvain gets to the Lone Wolf, he tries not to be too noticeable as he steps out to wait beside the rest of the line. He waits, seated as a bench as busy waiters and waitresses bustle about, until someone notices him. He burns a bit of his time, checking his work email and texting his friends.

“Oh! Sylvain! You’re here!”

Sylvain looks up from his phone and finds the bubbly waitress, Annette, beaming at him. Sylvain can’t help but to smile back. It’s hard not to feel a bit of joy, a spring in your step, when you see someone so genuinely elated to see you.

"Hey there. Nice to see you again,” Sylvain greets as he stands up. He pointedly ignores the way that the other patrons stare.

“Nice to see you too!” Annette chirps and gestures with her arm. “Come right this way, please!” She leads the way towards the table near the kitchen doors once again. Sylvain obediently stands and follows her, trying not to get in the way of the busy workers.

It’s a busy night, especially since it's a weekend evening, and just about all the tables are filled, much of the tables covered in freshly cooked foods that make Sylvain’s stomach growl. It never fails to astound Sylvain how Felix’s restaurant manages to draw in so many eager patrons. It never fails to astound Sylvain just how _good_ Felix is at what he does.

“It’s so exciting to have you back around again,” Annette gushes. She fixes him a small, mischievous smile. “I mean it! Like, Felix hasn’t taken a second off, trying to make something special for you! I bet you that whatever it is, it’s gonna be great!”

Sylvain feels a pulse of pride go through his veins, but he doesn’t show it. To think that his opinion is so important to Felix just makes Sylvain feel a little warm. “That so?” he muses. He can’t keep a small smile off his face though. “Well, I hope he’s been taking care of himself throughout all that.”

“Don’t worry about it! Mercie never lets him spend too much time in the kitchen.”

Sylvain nearly halts in his tracks. His thoughts start spinning around in his head. That’s a new name. “Mercie?”

"Yeah! Mercedes! She’s my best friend in the whole wide world!” Annette beams. “She’s really nice and stuff so she takes care of him since he just doesn’t know when to stop working sometimes.” Annette’s smile falters. “Felix stresses himself out a lot—especially lately—so Mercie likes to bring him tea and walk him to his car when he stays here too long.” She waits a beat before noticing Sylvain’s silence. “Oh! We think he's probably doing fine though,” she adds quickly, but Sylvain’s hardly listening.

Just like that, all the pride in his body starts to melt away, instead manifesting into an ugly monster of a feeling—one that he’s always hated. Anxiety mixes with a hint of jealousy, the feelings coiling up at the bottom of his chest and makes it hard for him to say anything. He just nods along to Annette’s words, wearing his casual smile.

He kind of tunes out what Annette is saying, instead thinking about this ‘Mercie’ person. He has no doubt about that she’s a much better fit for Felix than Sylvain would be—someone so emotionally in-tune with him that she can understand Felix’s tendency to work himself to the bone, even when he looks fine. He has no doubt that someone like this probably fits Felix better, someone who is willing to do so much to help him relax. It’s a crushing thought to have.

And how could Sylvain have thought for a second that Felix was single? Felix, with his lovely, amber eyes—the way that they crinkle the smallest bit at the corners when he gives one of his rare, heart-stopping smiles. Felix, with his long, dark hair that Sylvain just wants to run his hands through. Felix, in all his 5’8” glory—a comment that would most definitely get Sylvain’s ass kicked for leaving off that last half inch.

Flowery prose and all height jokes aside, Felix is one hell of a catch. Why _wouldn’t_ he have a girlfriend?

Forget it. Sylvain will mope at home. He can break out the alcohol and have a nice little pity party for himself later. For now, he doesn’t want to draw any attention to his concerns, especially when he’s just supposed to be out for a fun time with a friend.

He’ll do what he’s always done best: put on a smile and lie, lie, lie. No one will ever figure that anything’s wrong with him. No one has in the past.

(Save for maybe Felix—but he’s a special case.)

He and Annette come to the table, where there’s a neat piece sign, a piece of cardstock folded in half with the word _Reserved_ written in ridiculously ornate calligraphy. It looks like it could have been printed like that, but at the same time, the other side of the sign seems to have a slight difference that Sylvain can only attribute to human error.

Well, at least he gets this. He feels a little better seeing that he’s special enough to warrant a ‘reserved’ sign, but his jealousy still eats away at him.

Annette plucks the sign up and gestures at the table with a smile. “Here you are! Felix will be out with your food in just a second so please wait!”

Sylvain smiles at her and takes a seat. “Thanks, Annette.”

“No problem!” Annette scurries away into the kitchen, quietly humming under her breath.

As soon as Annette is out of view, Sylvain slumps in his seat and sighs.

Sylvain holds to the hope that Felix shows up soon. The longer he waits, the more he thinks; the more he thinks, the worse his thoughts start to get, no matter how he tries to let his feelings go.

He gets curious. He wants to know who Mercedes is. He wants to know what Felix sees in her that he wouldn’t be able to see in Sylvain. Sylvain isn’t a woman or anything, but he can be just as caring and soft as whoever this lady is. Plus, he and Felix were practically glued to the hip as kids. They had all these great memories together, and they know just about everything regarding one another. Wouldn’t it make sense to fall in love with someone like Sylvain?

Sylvain shouldn’t be acting like this. This poor woman is just out there, living her life, and Sylvain is being bitter over a relationship that never existed and never could exist.

And honestly, Sylvain’s happy that Felix found someone if it makes him happy. Someone who can bring him down to earth and help him unwind after a hard day. Someone who makes him feel loved and understood. Someone who was there for him when his closest friend couldn’t be.

The sound of snapping in front of his face abruptly pulls Sylvain out of his thoughts and back into the real world with a jolt. He looks up and finds Felix giving him a strange look, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Sylvain?”

Sylvain shakes his head, as if to shake away the lingering touch of those jealous thoughts, at least for the moment. He sits upright and smiles.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something. I’ve been a little spacey lately.”

Felix puts a hand on his hip and gives him a flat look. He seems to be searching for something in Sylvain’s eyes, looking for the issue, but Sylvain won’t speak his thoughts, won’t say what’s wrong. He just continues to wear that small smile.

“Come on, Fe. You said you had food for me, didn’t you?” Sylvain cranes his head around Felix to try and catch a glimpse at the food on the cart Felix brought with him.

Felix opens his mouth like he’s going to protest, but he seems to decide against it with a loud sigh. He placed a tray of food in front of him and takes off the steel plate cover.

This time, it’s something that Sylvain isn’t quite familiar with, but it still looks and smells incredible. It’s a meat-based dish, noticeably grilled just to Sylvain’s liking with some sort of sauce on it, and it’s got a healthy side of seasoned rice and roasted vegetables.

Felix pulls out the chair from across him and takes a seat, crossing his arms. This time, surprisingly, he has something in front of him too. Sylvain didn’t notice him taking it off Sylvain’s tray, but he has a cup of tea for himself.

“It’s a dish from Duscur,” Felix tells him, picking up the cup and taking a small sip. “One of my chefs recommended it.”

Sylvain whistles. “Duscur? Sounds great! I don’t think I’ve had cuisine from there in a while—like, in a year or so?” He picks up his fork. “You know, it’d probably do you guys some good to have variety in your menu too. A Duscur meal would be a great addition.”

Felix hums noncommittally, sipping from his cup.

Sylvain forks a bit of savory meat, coupled with a generous helping of rice and spices, into his mouth and chews slowly. It’s a little dry, but the smoked and spicy flavors of the dish don’t go unnoticed. It’s the best thing that Sylvain’s had since he last ate at Felix’s restaurant. There’s no doubt about it—Felix is genuinely one of the most talented chefs that Sylvain knows, and his food is absolutely divine.

“So?” Felix prompts.

Sylvain finishes his mouthful before answering, “Really good! But it’s a little dry.” He pauses. “I think that you could use a little less seasoning on the rice too. It’s a bit strong.”

Felix clicks his tongue and frowns. “Damn it. That’s what he said too.”

“Who?”

“Dedue.” Felix gives a short huff and picks up his tea. “He’s married to the chef who recommended the dish. He’s been helping me get a more authentic Duscur taste.” Felix takes a sip and sets the teacup down.

“I still think it’s really, really good.”

"I know you do.” Felix shakes his head. “But it’s not good enough. Not yet.”

Then, Sylvain remembers how Annette mentioned how Felix had been stressing, and immediately feels guilty. Should he have lied to Felix? Would that have helped him to stop stressing himself out in the kitchen? Is this kind of stress and self-deprecation all for Sylvain?

Felix did say that he doesn’t like dishonesty, that he doesn’t like when people change their minds to appease others, but Sylvain just wants Felix not to feel like this ‘challenge’ is like some sort of decisive academic grade.

A part of himself thinks that even if Sylvain upset him with his thoughts, Mercedes could just come and comfort Felix, but Sylvain quickly brushes that thought away. What kind of friend thinks like that? Sylvain lets himself wallow in his frustration with himself for a split second before focusing on Felix again.

Again, he can sulk all he wants at home. Right now, he wants to make Felix feel less shitty.

“Hey, is everything okay?” Felix flicks his gaze up at him, looking a little surprised. “I mean, Annette’s been telling me that you’ve been stressing out a lot, and I really hope that it’s not because of me.”

Felix casts a glance at Annette, who is animatedly chatting with a happy couple a few tables down. He raises an eyebrow and shakes his head, moving his gaze back to Sylvain. "I’m fine. She just worries too much about everything.”

“She seemed reasonably concerned. She mentioned that someone’s dragging you out of here. You shouldn’t overwork yourself like that.” Sylvain’s careful not to name Mercedes. Felix would probably want to tell Sylvain about Mercedes by himself so Sylvain leaves that vague, just in case.

(A small part of him wants to say, _You've always been like that_. A small part of him wants to say, _You always put your work before yourself._ A small part of him wants to say, _I always worry about you._ )

“It’s not like that.” Felix sighs. “I’m not stressed, and I’m not overworking myself.” He crosses his arms. “You forget that this is something that I do because I’m good at it. It’s not hard.”

“That’s hardly a logical argument,” Sylvain points out. “Easy things can be stressful too.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Sylvain, seriously. It’s not that deep. You don’t need to act like a therapist. I’m fine.” He nudges the plate of food towards Sylvain. “Eat before it gets cold. It won’t taste good if it does.”

Sylvain shrugs a little and picks up his utensils again. “Alright, but I’m just saying. You can get stressed by simple tasks, and if this is stressing you, you might want to take it easy.” He waits a beat before adding, a little quieter, “I don’t want you stressing yourself for my sake.”

Felix pinches the bridge of his nose. “I guess I didn’t explain myself properly. This is something I’m good at. And I enjoy it. It’s not stressful to me.”

While Sylvain eats, he manages, “Well, I think you’re stressing yourself if you’re staying here so long that people have to come and get you.”

“Sylvain,” Felix stresses, giving him a sharp look, and Sylvain raises his hands placatingly.

“I’m just saying!” He offers a small smile. He feels bad that he can’t let his feelings go just yet, but Felix looks so cute like that, trying to be mad at him when he really isn’t. It’s just a pouty scowl, but on Felix, it just looks so out of place and indescribably cute. “I’m just worried.”

Sylvain hadn’t even realized what he had said until Felix is responding to it. He thanks God that he didn’t let anything more personal or embarrassing slip—and he thanks God for Felix’s nonchalance.

Felix doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Well, don’t be. I’m fine.”

Sylvain manages to steer the conversation back towards something less serious. He and Felix talk about how their weeks went, about the food and how the restaurant is doing, about how Sylvain’s job and his food blog are doing. In the end, Sylvain ends up chatting with Felix for a good while, up until the restaurant is about to close.

Sylvain feels apologetic for keeping Felix for so long, but Felix doesn’t seem to mind.

“It wasn’t a busy night or anything,” Felix tells Sylvain, standing up and collecting the tray. He sets his own tea cup on top of it. “So don’t bother apologizing.” After a beat, he adds, “Or paying.”

But Sylvain is already taking out his wallet when Felix is talking, earning him a dirty glare. Sylvain only grins at him.

“Why are you so adamant in wasting your money?” Felix huffs.

"Hey, I just want to support your business,” Sylvain answers easily. He takes out some cash, but Felix gives him a dirty look. “What’s wrong about wanting to support a friend?”

“Keep it. I’m not taking it.” Felix jerks his head to the kitchen doors. “I’m going to put these away, but just stay right here.”

“Stay?” Sylvain cocks his head.

Felix gives a terse nod. “I’ll be right back.”

Felix leaves towards the kitchen doors, and Sylvain leaves the money on the table, tucked just out of sight but somewhere that a waiter or a waitress cleaning up the table would see it. He stays seated at the table, idly scrolling through his phone until Felix returns.

He looks up when he hears the doors leading to the kitchen creak open, the sounds of muffled chatter over the sounds of dishes clattering and water running—presumably the sounds of the chefs cleaning up for the night. Felix, now dressed in a grey hoodie and a pair of jeans, walks over with a silver-haired boy with a bright smile.

“Sylvain.” He nods at the boy. “This is Ashe. Ashe, Sylvain.”

“Nice to finally meet you!” Ashe takes Sylvain’s hand in a firm handshake. “Felix mentioned you a few times so it’s great to finally put a face to the name.” Felix shoots Ashe a look, but Ashe doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to him.

“Nice to meet you too.” Sylvain smiles politely. He looks over at Felix, a little confused.

“This is one of my chefs. His husband helped me to make the meal.”

“What’d you think of it?” Ashe asks eagerly. His green eyes practically glint with anticipation. “Felix and Dedue have been working really hard to get it perfect!”

Sylvain laughs good-naturedly. “Oh, it was absolutely incredible! I didn’t expect anything less from Felix, though.” He winks at Felix, who rolls his eyes and reaches over to playfully swat at his arm.

“Don’t be a kiss-ass.”

“Ow! Hey!” Sylvain gasps, all theatrics, and rubs at his arm. “Don’t be so mean, Fe. I really did like it. A lot, actually. Best thing I've eaten in a while.” Sylvain pouts and looks to Ashe. “How do you work with him? He’s so rude.”

Ashe laughs. “He’s not mean when you’ve worked with him for some time.”

“Are you just saying this because he’s your boss?” Sylvain teases, and Ashe tenses, his eyes widening.

“Huh? What? No! I-I mean it! Really!” Ashe gives Sylvain a very solemn look. “I’ve worked with Felix for a few years, and he’s been great to work with.”

“Don’t worry about him, Ashe,” Felix says calmly. “He’s just like that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sylvain gives Felix his best pitiful face.

Unfazed as always, Felix replies with a deadpan, “It means what it means,” which surprisingly earns a stifled snicker from Ashe.

“So how did you meet Felix?”

-

Sylvain spends quite a bit of time talking with Felix and Ashe. It’s not long enough that all the workers have left, but the restaurant definitely closed a while back. The other workers don’t seem to really mind though, sometimes throwing their curious gazes over to the three of them.

Sylvain likes Ashe. He’s a good kid—from what he’s seen and learned, Ashe is kind, hard-working, and he’s even a little nerdy, referencing these old classics from time to time. He’s a little earnest, at some points naïve, but he seems to catch on quickly—and hey, he knows quite a bit of stuff that Sylvain doesn’t know.

(Actually, some of the things Ashe knows is a little concerning—like how to pick locks—but everyone has their secrets, Sylvain supposes.)

Sylvain isn’t entirely sure why Felix wanted to introduce him to Ashe, but he’s fine with it. Ashe is pleasant to be around, and they have a few things in common, like their tastes in books and a few foods. He enjoyed getting to meet this kind chef.

Eventually, as their conversation comes to a close, Felix reaches into his apron pocket and hands Ashe a pair of keys. “Can you lock up for tonight?”

Ashe stares down at the keys. “Me? Why?” He plays with the keys in his hands before looking up at Felix.

“I’m leaving a little early.”

Ashe flicks his gaze between Sylvain and Felix briefly before giving a small nod. “You can count on me!” He smiles at Sylvain. “It was nice to meet you! Thank you so much for stopping by.”

Sylvain smiles back at him. “Nice to meet you too. I'll see you around.” As Ashe heads back into the kitchen, Sylvain turns to Felix. “Did something come up? I didn’t think that you’d have a reason to leave your restaurant early.”

Felix shrugs his shoulders a little and stuffs his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “Nothing came up. You said you were worried since I was staying here so often. I figured it’d do you some good to see me leave this place for once.”

Sylvain smiles a little. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Felix starts heading towards the door.

Sylvain walks out with Felix, side-by-side. It makes Sylvain’s heart beat like hell to be so close, so casual, with Felix, but he quickly reminds himself that Felix has a girlfriend and that he should respect those boundaries.

The silence between them is comfortable, cozy. Sylvain walks a little slowly, as if to take in the scenery, but he just wants to bask in Felix’s presence. It isn’t often that he gets to meet his friend in person like this. Even if they were reunited, their schedules differ so greatly that Sylvain thinks he can only ever see Felix at the restaurant.

Felix ambles along just as slowly, as if he’s trying to match Sylvain’s stride. Sylvain’s gaze lingers on Felix’s face. His face is impassive, but he looks calm in a way. Sylvain wonders what he’s thinking—what he’s feeling.

“This one.” Felix gestures at a car.

“What? No way!” Felix turns to him and raises an eyebrow. Sylvain stops by Felix’s dull, beat-up car and balks. “For a famous person, you sure have one hell of a crappy car.”

Felix shrugs. “It gets the job done so I don’t care. I’m not a car guy.”

Sylvain gently pats the car on the hood. “Oh, this poor girl. You should get her patched up. Or maybe get a car that doesn’t make you look like you’re twice your age.”

Felix clicks his tongue and makes a face. “It works. I don’t need a fancy car to drive around when this one does the job just fine.”

"Spoken like a true old man." 

Felix shakes his head. “Anyway.” He unlocks his car and nods at Sylvain. “The next dish will be better.”

Sylvain laughs. “Yeah? I already thought this one was pretty amazing. Don’t know how you’re going top perfection, but I’m down.”

That earns an eyeroll from Felix. “Kiss-ass. It wasn't perfect.” He smirks nonetheless. “No, but I mean it, Sylvain. The next will be better. Maybe it'll be the best you've ever had."

Sylvain smiles at him and tucks his hands into his pockets. “Well, I’m excited for that then. Work hard and stuff, but just make sure to take care of yourself.”

"Yeah, yeah.” Felix waves off his concern as he opens the door to his car and hops in. He starts up the car, but before he pulls out of the parking lot—before he even takes the car out of park—he rolls the window down. “Hey. Sylvain.”

Sylvain, waiting patiently to see Felix off, cocks his head at him.

“Um. Thanks.”

 _For what?_ Sylvain wants to ask, but the stilted way he said it makes Sylvain think that Felix is embarrassed. Sylvain tries his best to fill in the blanks for him. _For coming out tonight. For taste-testing. For walking out to my car with me._

“Don’t mention it.” Sylvain beams at Felix. “It’s what friends are for, right?”

They exchange their goodbyes, and Sylvain watches Felix leave the Lone Wolf. That magical feeling of being around friends and being carefree and happy slowly wears off with every foot that Felix drives away until Sylvain finds himself feeling lonely and tired. He heads to his car so he can drive himself home for the night.


	4. [jealousy intensifies, but, like, subtly]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delving into Sylvain's life.
> 
> Now with a hint of Dorogrid because both these lovely ladies deserve to be happy! ;w;

Sylvain hardly ever expects guests at his home anymore.

He used to have tons of guests, often in the form of one-night stands and girlfriends. He used to throw killer parties, the typical type that one would see in a movie about college students. He used to have people over more often than not, but now, he’s usually living on his own.

Not to say that it’s bad or anything. Living alone has its perks—like how Sylvain can blast his music to drown out the silence and belt along like he’s performing on a stage and how he doesn’t have to pick up after anyone’s messes but his own. But it is nice to have some kind of company from time to time, just to kill the loneliness and the darkness that lurks there. The only people who visit him are Dimitri, food delivery services, and maybe some delivery people if they really need him to sign for his packages.

Oh, and on occasion, his other childhood best friend, Ingrid, who is standing in his doorway right now.

Ingrid smiles at him, stepping into Sylvain’s apartment and drawing him in for a one-armed hug. “Hey, Sylvain,” she greets.

“Ingrid?” Sylvain blurts out. Confusion envelops him, but he spots Dimitri in the doorway too. The joy at seeing his friends at his home drowns out the confusion, and he smiles brightly. “I didn’t think I’d be having guests today so excuse the mess,” he jokes, giving Ingrid a small squeeze and making a motion for his guests to come in. “Come in, come in. Make yourselves comfortable.”

Sylvain moves to shut the door, but a hand stops it abruptly in its place.

“You’re not forgetting me, are you?” a lovely voice asks from behind the door.

“Oh, of course not, Dorothea. You’re impossible to forget,” Sylvain replies warmly, earning himself a fondly exasperated eyeroll from Ingrid as Dorothea steps in. Dorothea pats Sylvain on the cheek with a grin and takes her place beside Ingrid, their hands interlacing naturally—as if their hands were molded to be held by the other and no one else.

“What’s the occasion?” Sylvain asks, shutting the front door. He heads to the kitchen to prepare drinks and snacks, like he used to when he hosted parties all the time. As he prepares some tea and neatly arranges some crackers on a plate, his eyes wander to where his friends are comfortably sprawled.

Seeing his friends settled on the couch—Ingrid sits upright with Dorothea sprawled across the couch and her head in Ingrid’s lap and Dimitri sits on Sylvain’s favorite beanbag, looking just a touch stiff as always but happy nonetheless—just makes Sylvain feel strangely at ease. With his friends in his home, it feels like all is right in the world.

(But it feels like someone is missing. Someone endearingly grouchy with a penchant for culinary arts. Someone who is frustratingly _taken_.)

“Well, Ingrid just wanted to visit.” Dorothea lolls her head over to look at Sylvain. “I mean, it’s been a while since we’ve been in Faerghus, and I have business here so I thought it’d be a great time to come over.”

“How is Adrestia?” Dimitri asks. His tone is polite, but there’s a tense wariness in his expression. _How is she_? goes unsaid, but is understood.

“Oh, it’s great there,” Ingrid quickly replies. The tension in the room slowly starts to die down as she speaks. “The people there are really nice, and it’s just beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as my Ingrid,” Dorothea croons, and Ingrid visibly flushes.

“But I _did_ miss my home,” Ingrid admits. Dorothea reaches up and tucks a lock of Ingrid’s short, blonde hair behind her ear. “I missed you guys.”

“Aww, Ingrid.” Sylvain enters the living room, holding his plate of snacks and tea. He winks at her as he sets the plate on the coffee table. “I knew you found me absolutely irresistible.”

“You mean insufferable.” Ingrid rolls her eyes but reaches for a cookie with a growing smile anyway.

“You mean insolent.” Dorothea sticks her tongue out at Sylvain. “She’s mine, Sylvain.”

Sylvain feigns a hurt expression, gasping dramatically and putting a hand to his chest, but he quickly changes the subject with a relaxed smile. He didn’t want to start anything, even it it was born from a little joke or a misunderstanding. Dorothea can be a little testy when matters came to Ingrid, but Sylvain understood, especially given how Ingrid’s father reacted to the news of them dating.

Their little group settles into a comfortable conversation and even a few games as they nibble on what few snacks Sylvain had lying around—he’s _so_ lucky that he nabbed a few of those packaged biscuits on a whim while grocery shopping—and Sylvain hardly notices how much time they spend together. Ingrid, Dorothea, and Dimitri crashed at Sylvain’s house roughly around two in the afternoon, but they’re still here by the time that dinner rolls around.

Dorothea recalls her time teaching students to act and sing in a local theatre; Ingrid recounts how she’s been doing at her veterinary hospital. Dimitri shares his current projects—as well as he can without nullifying some sort of contract and having to call his manager, of course. Sylvain notes how happy they all seem, how Dorothea and Ingrid’s gazes seem to always draw to one another as if drawn by an invisible force. He wonders if he’s been happy.

He doesn’t mind his day job, and he loves his food blog. He loves trying new foods and writing his honest thoughts on them, and he loves spending time with Dimitri. But he still feels that his life could be better. That it’s just a little emptier than he feels like it should be.

“I’m kind of hungry,” Dorothea muses as she watches Sylvain beat Ingrid in another game of chess. “Got anything good to eat around here?” She stands up, stretches briefly, and start to make her way to Sylvain’s kitchen.

Sylvain takes a second to recall what he has stored away in his kitchen as Dorothea rifles through his refrigerator and his pantry, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like, “Ugh, a bachelor’s kitchen is always a nightmare.” He can’t think of anything other than maybe some leftovers he’d had and some packets of macaroni and cheese.

“Don’t think I do.” _What the hell_ do _I even eat?_ Sylvain thinks. _I don’t really buy dinner foods because I’ve been spending a lot of my dinners at The Lone Wolf._ Sylvain sits up, an idea popping in his head like a stroke of genius. “Hey, there’s this really great place nearby, though.”

Dimitri perks up when he sees the look on Sylvain’s face. “Oh, do you mean The Lone Wolf?” He turns to Ingrid. “It’s really great there! The food—it’s something that I can taste!”

Ingrid’s eyes widen. “Really? That’s amazing!” She turns to face Dorothea. “Did you hear that? It must be something special if Dimitri can taste it.”

Dorothea shuts Sylvain’s refrigerator door and turns to face Ingrid with a small smile. “Is that so? Well, then, let’s give it a try.”

-

Ingrid and Dorothea are abuzz with interest when they pull into the parking lot of The Lone Wolf.

“Isn’t this that super famous place?” Dorothea asks, untangling her hand from Ingrid’s to put her hands on the shoulders of the passenger and driver’s seat. She pokes her head between Dimitri and Sylvain and points at the restaurant. “I swear I’ve seen this all over the place!”

“Yes,” answers Dimitri with a small smile, “this is Felix Fraldarius’s restaurant.”

“What, like _the_ Felix Fraldarius?” Dorothea asks, her eyes wide. “World-renown chef and absolute nightmare Felix? That one?”

When Dimitri nods in reply, Ingrid pulls her lips into a frown. “Won’t this be a little pricey?”

“Don’t worry.” Sylvain puts the car in park and flashes her a smile. Against better judgment, he tells her, “I’ll foot the bill.”

Both Ingrid and Dimitri give him a frown, though Dimitri’s seems more guilty and Ingrid’s seems more frustrated.

“You’re crazy,” Ingrid scolds. “Don’t just waste your money like that!”

“Aww, you’re so selfless.” Dorothea teases him and pats his shoulder. She casts her gaze back at Ingrid with a smile. “Come on, Ingrid. If the man wants to be all ‘macho’ and wreck his credit score, let him. It doesn’t hurt us, does it?”

“You won’t hurt my credit score. My dad’s, maybe, but not mine,” Sylvain jokes, and Dorothea laughs, ruffling his hair. “It’s only good feelings here, Ingrid,” he assures her.

Ingrid sighs in what seems like resignation, but Sylvain knows that when the bill comes out again, there’s bound to be another argument over how to split it.

Until then, both Ingrid and Sylvain seem content to ignore it for the sake of a stress-free and fun dinner with their friends.

Sylvain leads his friends into the restaurant. They all wait in line, Dorothea gleefully taking pictures of the gorgeous interior and chattering away with Ingrid. At one point, Dimitri, the tallest one of them, is handed Dorothea’s phone to take a picture of their whole friend group, but fearing that he might damage her phone, he passes it off to Sylvain, who takes a few pictures for them, including one, unflattering close-up of his face that earns him a _look_ from Dorothea.

When they finally make their way to the front of the line, Annette is the hostess standing there, ready to take them to their table.

She smiles brightly. “Hi, Sylvain!” she chirps. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today!” Her smile falters for a second as she scrunches her face up in thought. "I don't remember Felix saying that you were coming tonight..." she mumbles to herself.

“Nah. Just here with some friends.” Sylvain smiles at her.

Her brilliant smile is back in place in no time. “Oh! Of course. Just four, right?”

“Yup.”

“I think I can get you all a table, then!” She steps away from the podium in the front and picks up four menus. “Follow me, please!”

They weave through the restaurant, dodging passersby, tables, carts of food, and workers before they finally reach a cozy booth. It’s a little weird sitting in a seat that isn’t that ‘reserved’ spot for Sylvain near the kitchen, but he’s sure he’ll adjust quickly enough.

The booth is warmly lit, a light hanging overhead that illuminates everyone’s faces and the abstract painting hanging on the wall beside them, and it’s already been cleaned and set. Sylvain still finds it incredible how quickly and efficiently the people here work. He wonders how much of it is Felix’s influence—to-the-point, impatient, busy.

Sylvain lets his friends find their seats first. Ingrid and Dorothea slide into the same side of the booth. Sylvain sits beside Dimitri, across from Ingrid.

After everyone gets settled, Annette passes out menus and takes drink orders before smiling politely at them all. “Someone'll be right over with your drinks and they'll take your orders too!”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Annette beams at them and heads back to the podium near the entrance. Just as soon as she leaves them, everyone at the table starts to open up the menu and look over at the options.

“Wow, these prices are steep,” Ingrid mutters, but her attention is quickly drawn away from the numbers written in a curvy font. “Wow, these all look really good.”

“I think the food here’s very good! I’d recommend the cheese gratin or the cheesy Verona stew.”

Ingrid wrinkles her nose. “All that cheese can’t be good for you, Dimitri.” Before she could say something about nutrition and cholesterol, Dorothea gasps and points at the menu.

“Oh! Look, Ingrid! They have a red turnip dish!” Dorothea smiles fondly. “Country-Style Red Turnip Plate. I haven't seen any restaurants in Faerghus selling this kind of dish before."

Ingrid smiles. “Does it look any good?”

Dorothea starts to read off the description printed there. “A balanced meal including red turnip and Verona stew, red turnip salad, and sautéed red turnip with garlic.” She frowns a little. “Um. It’s not very descriptive.”

“It’s all like that,” Sylvain says with a small smile.

“Huh. Weird.” Dorothea shrugs. “It still reminds me of something I used to like. The picture looks really good too! I might just have to get that.” She looks over Ingrid's shoulder at her menu. "What about you? What do you think you want to get?"

As Ingrid debates between some type of meat skewer and teppanyaki, Sylvain looks over the menu himself. He smiles a little to himself when he sees the dishes that he taste-tested for Felix put in a little box marked as ‘new.’ He’s already tasted them so he figures that he could give his opinion to Dimitri or Ingrid if they want input on those dishes—but otherwise, he thinks he wants to try something new.

He skims over the menu. Despite the unimaginative descriptions, the pictures and the ingredients make his stomach rumble, flavors dancing on his tongue. But he’s been eating light all day so he’s craving something savory and satiating.

The Garreg Mach Meat Pie looks pretty appetizing. _A crisp-brown pie packed with tomatoes, cheese, and tender chunks of lamb,_ the description reads. It sounds savory, satiating, and it’s a little nostalgic.

Back when he was attending Garreg Mach, Sylvain had prepared this same meat pie and eaten a few of his peers’ renditions of it—but even back then, he remembers how Felix’s version of this dish had still been the best of all his other classmates. Felix would make this pie for him a few times throughout Sylvain’s stay at Garreg Mach. Seeing it here on the menu now makes Sylvain realize that he kind of missed that.

(He missed the pie, but at the same time, he missed how Felix would sit him at their shared apartment’s kitchen table, how he would present him with the pie and sit in front of him, waiting to hear Sylvain complain about homework or talk about girls with this odd look on his face. He’s happy that Felix is back in his life, but he still misses him.)

Eventually, a server does drop by, and the conversation at the table draws to a slow. Bernadetta greets them and hands out drinks before holding up her notepad and a pen.

“Are you ready to order?” she asks, just as mild and timid as Sylvain remembers.

Sylvain looks around at his friends, and they all seem to nod. They all order their food— _one Country-Style Red Turnip Plate, one wild boar teppanyaki, one Derdriu-Style Fried Pheasant, and one Garreg Mach Meat Pie—_ and Bernadetta diligently takes note, scrawling quickly, before repeating their orders back.

“Will that be all?”

Sylvain collects the menus from his friends and hands them to Bernadetta with a smile. She averts her gaze with a small flush. “Yup.”

“O-okay! I’ll be back with your meals!” she squeaks.

“Leave the girl alone, Sylvain,” Dorothea chides, picking part of the paper covering off her straw and blowing the remainder at Sylvain. It flies through the air and pelts him in the cheek. Ingrid giggles a little as Sylvain huffs, balling up the paper covering and placing it on the table.

“I didn’t do anything!” Sylvain protests. “She’s just a little jumpy from what I’ve seen. Dimitri knows this too!”

“This is true,” Dimitri agrees, sipping his drink. “I can attest—that waitress served us last time, and she was very skittish then too.”

“Dimitri,” Dorothea says slowly, almost like she’s pitying him, “you don’t have to stick up for Sylvain if he’s wrong.”

Sylvain flicks the paper covering at Dorothea, but he misses. Dorothea gives him a playful look, the kind that swears _try me again, I dare you_. Dimitri only chuckles, shaking his head a little when Ingrid refuses to give Dorothea the trash from her straw.

-

When the food comes out, Sylvain can only watch with some kind of pride when his friends take their first bite and gasp.

“This is really good,” Ingrid exclaims, with the kind of ravenous twinkle in her eyes that hints that she might order more when Bernadetta stops by again. “I wasn’t expecting this to taste like this at all!”

“I’ve only tried the red turnip salad so far, but wow!” Dorothea chimes in. “It’s got that perfect amount of spicy and sweet—and the dressing is great!” She turns to Ingrid. ‘Can I have a bite?”

Ingrid and Dorothea swap dishes and gush over the food. Meanwhile, Dimitri digs into his pheasant-based sandwich busily, as if he hadn’t eaten anything in years. He wears a small, delighted expression, and Sylvain already knows what Dimitri’s bound to say— _I can taste this one too, Sylvain!_

Sylvain decides to eat his Garreg Mach meat pie. Seeing how fancily it’s placed on this little porcelain plate and hearing the sound of his metal fork scraping against the crispy crust of the pie, Sylvain can tell that this is going to be one hell of a delicious meal. He carves out a little slice, relishing in how his fork cuts through the crust and the layers within, and he takes his first bite.

It’s just as good as he remembered. He can practically imagine his college apartment when he was Garreg Mach, Felix clattering around in the kitchen while he sits in the living room and procrastinates on studying for his next written exam. The meat is tender, soft, a little gamey; the tomatoes, warm and packed in the pie, are that classic tomato flavor, kind of tart but kind of sweet; and the cheese melts and oozes in a way that Sylvain just loves.

“How is yours?” Ingrid asks Sylvain with a small smile.

“Oh, it’s just perfect.”

Dimitri shoots him a surprised look. “You have nothing to say about it?”

Sylvain pauses, and a sly smile starts to split his lips. It really is just about perfect in his mind, but if given the chance to summon Felix from the kitchen again, to see his face all scrunched up in annoyance and faux anger, then…

“Well…” Sylvain presses his lips into a thin line and takes another bite, almost theatrical in how slowly and deliberately he chews. “Hm.”

“Is something wrong with it?” Dorothea asks, furrowing her eyebrows.

“Is it uncooked or something?” Ingrid asks, eyes wide.

Dimitri gives Sylvain a knowing but disapproving look, a stern look that his father would give him, but he says nothing. He continues to eat as Sylvain waits for their waitress to come by.

Sylvain catches Bernadetta just as she’s walking by, almost inaudibly humming but clearly daydreaming about something pleasant, if the tiny smile on her face is anything to go off of. “Hey, Bernadetta.”

“Huh?” Bernadetta loses the dazed, dreamlike look to her eyes, and jolts, now very lucid and wide-eyed. She turns to Sylvain with a wary look. “Yes?”

“About my food…”

“Oh. Oh no.” Bernadetta wrings her hands. “Is there something wrong with it?” she asks quietly. “I c-can send it back and get you another one, if you want.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Dorothea persists. “If it’s something small, just suck it up,” she tells him, voice low. “Don’t make this into some big deal if you don’t have to.”

"But what if it’s not?” Ingrid asks. “What if it’s completely raw?”

Dorothea gives Ingrid a look. “At such a fancy restaurant?”

Ingrid gives a shrug. “Accidents happen.”

Bernadetta looks over Sylvain, and something clicks. She takes a small step back. “Um, d-do you want to talk to our head chef?” she asks slowly.

“Seriously?” Dorothea gives Sylvain a stern look before turning to Bernadetta. “I think—”

“I think that’d be nice.”

“Alright, I’ll go get him.” Bernadetta gives Sylvain a small smile—as timid as that smile is, Sylvain gets that Bernadetta recognizes him from his time here and that she understands who he is—and leaves.

“Sylvain, don’t be a dick,” Dorothea huffs. “Felix is probably insanely busy back there. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Are you going to get us banned from here?” Ingrid’s expression turns sad. “Oh, but I was really starting to like it here.” Dorothea gives Ingrid a pitying look.

Dimitri just sighs in resignation. “Ingrid, Dorothea. Please don’t worry about this too much. He did this last time too.”

“Last time? Sylvain!”

Sylvain hears the telltale slam of the kitchen doors opening. His friends jolt, and Ingrid and Dorothea exchange worried looks. But when Sylvain peeks his head up over the other patrons and the workers, when he locks eyes with a fuming Felix, Felix’s anger fades away. Felix makes his way to the table and crosses his arms.

"You,” he deadpans. Accusatory, but not truly angry.

“Me,” Sylvain says with a smile.

“What’s wrong this time?” Felix looks down and points at Sylvain’s meat pie. He narrows his tongue and clicks his tongue. “I made that one myself. I can’t possibly imagine what you _think_ I did wrong.”

“Sylvain,” Ingrid hisses at him in an angry whisper. “Don’t say anything stupid!” She shoots Felix an apologetic look.

“Don’t get me wrong—it’s still delicious! There’s just something kind of wrong with it! Try it.” Sylvain gestures at it, and Felix sighs, rolling his eyes.

Felix reaches into his uniform pocket and takes out a fork. He cuts himself a piece and tries the meat pie. “Nope. I don’t see what you mean. It tastes fine.”

“It’s _missing_ something.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dorothea huffs at Sylvain. “You called that poor man all the way out here because your food’s a little bland? Just ask for salt or something!”

“He did that before,” Dimitri unhelpfully chimes in. “That really wasn’t any better. Felix still came out here.”

“Sylvain, you insensitive moron!” Ingrid snaps. She turns to Felix. “I’m so sorry about it. Please just ignore him. He’s just being dramatic.”

Sylvain, playfully and spitefully dramatic, gasps. “Dramatic? I’m just saying what it is, and it’s bland! Here, try some.” Sylvain cuts Ingrid a piece of pie with his fork and holds it out to Ingrid, not noticing the disheartened look that crosses Felix’s face for a split second.

Ingrid eyes the piece on the fork and eats it. She considers it briefly, chewing thoroughly, but when she’s done, she scowls. “What in the world are you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with it!”

Sylvain turns to Felix, trying to hide his little smile. “So what do you think you’re going to do about this problem?”

Felix crosses his arms. “Absolutely nothing.” He waits a beat. “I can bring you salt.”

“Lovely.” Sylvain grins. “That sounds great, thanks.” He turns to Ingrid and Dorothea. “Oh, should I mention that I know Felix?”

Ingrid and Dorothea just stare at him for a second, clearly dumbfounded.

“I can’t stand you." Ingrid punctuates her frustration with a drawn-out sigh. “Honestly, I came all the way from Adrestia to see you and Dimitri, and you just..." She shakes her head. "I have no words."

“Oh, you say that, but you love me anyway, Ingrid,” Sylvain teases with a wink. “Sorry to bug you, Fe, but I just thought it’d be fun to bring you out here. I mean, what’s the fun in coming here without seeing you?”

 _Don’t come on too strong_ , Sylvain tells himself, and he grounds himself to reality. _Don’t push the boundaries. You’re just a friend. He’s taken, remember?_

Felix crosses his arms. “You’re indescribably infuriating.” His gaze moves over to Ingrid and Dorothea. “But I wasn’t particularly busy so save your guilt for someone else.” He snaps his gaze back to Sylvain. Sylvain suppresses a chill that runs through his spine when Felix stares at him so intently with those deep, cinnamon-colored eyes. “Are you free next Tuesday?”

Sylvain blinks. “Huh? What? I mean, I guess I am. Why?”

“Come. I’ll have something for you then.”

Sylvain rubs the back of his neck, feeling flustered. It sounds so demanding—needy almost, in Felix speak. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. “Um, sure. I’ll make time."

Felix gives a noncommittal grunt. “Bernadetta will bring you salt,” he says, and he leaves.

“What was that about?” Ingrid asks, watching as Felix walks back to the kitchen.

“Felix lets Sylvain taste-test food before he puts it on the menu,” Dimitri explains. “To be completely honest, I am not entirely sure about them, but I know that they’ve been friends through college at least.” He looks at Sylvain as if for confirmation, but Sylvain doesn't say anything.

“Couldn’t you tell us that before he pulled that stunt?” Dorothea asks. She sighs. “At least we didn’t get kicked out or anything.”

Sylvain is still left stunned, confused. Why did Felix ask so suddenly and so publicly when he’s been sending him texts inviting him over? Why was he acting a little colder than usual today? Did Sylvain upset him by calling him to the table? He does suppose it _is_ an inconvenience. He'll text Felix an apology after work hours so he'll see it.

It doesn’t haunt him for very long, though.

Bernadetta brings him a little salt shaker, his friends continue eating and chatting though now they are pointedly more relaxed, and Sylvain gets to enjoy his food. He’s a little sad that Felix doesn’t come out to see him off, but he understands that Felix is busier than he lets on.

(Absentmindedly, he wonders if Felix is taking care of himself or if he’s still being dragged out of his restaurant by his girlfriend. He wonders if Felix took any of Sylvain’s concerns seriously. He wonders if Felix thinks of him as much as he thinks of Felix.)

Nonetheless, dinner passes without a hitch. Sylvain gets a few laughs out of his friends, and he relishes in the warmth of a lively dinner in the company of his friends. When it comes time for them to leave, he does end up covering the bill and even the tip for his friends, despite the way that all of them protest, but he doesn’t mind, filled with at having gotten to see them all again.

As they stand up to leave, Ingrid and Dorothea come up and give him a hug. Sylvain blinks and smiles, gesturing at Dimitri to join them. Dimitri shyly ambles up, and Sylvain pulls them all in a tight hug. Dimitri and Dorothea gently untangle themselves from the hug.

"We should get going." Dorothea nods along and smiles. 

"I'm getting a little tired so my Ingrid and I should be getting back to our hotel for tonight."

Yet Ingrid lingers near Sylvain, giving him a look. "Dima’s told me you’ve been acting a little weird. Are you okay?”

Has he been acting weird? He doesn’t recall doing anything to make Dimitri think that he’s not okay. Or perhaps this was in reference to those times where Sylvain was struggling with being lonely a while ago—before Sylvain saw Felix was in town. Knowing Ingrid, she could have held onto that concern and taken it more seriously than she should have.

Sylvain laughs. “I’m alright.” _A little lonely, but it’s nothing that tonight hasn’t remedied._ Sylvain pats Ingrid’s head. “Come on. Let’s get you all home.”

Ingrid stares him up and down, as if looking for signs that he’s lying, but eventually, she just gives a slow nod with her eyebrows furrowed. “Alright, well, Dorothea and I will be in town for a little longer. We’ll visit you some so if anything’s wrong—”

“I’m alright, Ingrid,” Sylvain insists. It seems to sate her concerns for the time being, and she relaxes, giving him a small smile.

The drive home is cozy and nice as everyone makes idle chatter with happy faces and full stomachs. Sylvain drives the girls back to the hotel that they’d rented a room at for their stay at Faerghus, and he drops Dimitri off at his home.

It’s a quiet drive back to his apartment, but his phone goes off with a few messages from his friends saying that they enjoyed their time and that they’d like to spend some more time together, leaving him feeling warm.

As Sylvain enters his darkened apartment and flicks on the lights, he can only think about how his life now is a far cry from his life before, when he was bringing someone home just about every other night. His life now is quieter and less eventful, often leaving him to the monotony of going to work and occasionally going out to eat with Dimitri for his food blog. But on the plus side, there aren’t as many girls leaving his apartment in an angry huff, and there aren’t as many girls slapping him across the face and screaming at him for being so terrible to them.

He admits that he feels a little weird living the way he is right now— _lonely_ and _unlovable_ are probably more accurate descriptions of how he feels, considering how much of his self-worth was derived from getting women to fall in love with him—but he thinks that it’s better this way. His phone isn’t being bombarded with furious calls and texts from his exes like it once was; his car isn’t being keyed; and he doesn’t have to worry that his name is being dragged through the mud any more than it had been.

After all, the fact that he was trying to change who he was is the part of the reason he lost contact with Felix. He had tried to shed his old life, getting a new number and new social media. He could have saved Felix’s number and all that, but there was still uncertainty lingering whether or not Sylvain could still be a part of Felix’s life without pushing that limit beyond friends, without making Felix angry at him.

(And even now, he’s unsure if he can do it, but he doesn’t think that he’d be able to survive cutting Felix out of his life for a second time.)

Still it’s better this way. It’s much better this way for him, the people he was flirting with, and it’s probably better for Felix too in some way.

But he’s still undeniably a lonely mess of emotional trauma.

He isn’t sure what can help him, though. Sometimes, it’s easy to relapse back into his ways, his eyes lingering on a woman that he could easily take home for a night; sometimes, it’s easy to want to feel loved, even if it’s painfully superficial, just for a little while. It’s easy to feel his emotions well up and overwhelm him in an apartment so dark, silent, and devoid of life.

But he’s still holding on and staying away from his terrible habits as best as he can.

(And a little part of him, too, is still holding on to the hopes that maybe Felix is lonely, that maybe he needs Sylvain the same way that he needs him, that maybe there’s still a happy ending written for him in his fate despite all the hardship and abuse from his family he’s been through.)


	5. sylvain: but felix :(( what about boys' night?

Tuesday evening rolls around soon enough, though Sylvain’s curiosity doesn’t diminish even the slightest bit throughout the week. If anything, he feels like he only grows more and more curious about Felix, especially seeing how he isn’t answering his texts as often. Sylvain’s messages will go unread for a day at a time, and Felix will hardly leave him a reply. Did Sylvain do something? Did he wrong him somehow? Upset him?

The curiosity eats away at him, but he can’t bring himself to ask directly. Knowing Felix, he’d probably would play it off, say he’s fine even if he’s really not, try to divert the attention from himself to his cooking. That’s not what Sylvain wants to hear at all. He tries to ask around, asking if he’s busy and things like that, but Felix doesn’t seem to want to talk about these kinds of things either, leaving him without a reply or a simple, _I’m fine._

As always, when Sylvain walks into The Lone Wolf, Annette is there to greet him. Her smile looks a little off, but the second her eyes land on him, it’s like a sigh of relief wracks her body.

“You’re here!” Annette makes her way to Sylvain.

“I’m here,” he repeats, quirking his lips up in an amused half-smile. He starts to follow her as she begins to lead him to that special table by the kitchen.

"Hey, um, can you please talk some sense into Felix?” Annette gives him a sad look. “He’s been acting a little weird lately, and none of us can get him to shake off this funk he’s got going on!”

Sylvain’s heart sinks a little in his chest. “Huh? What do you mean? What happened?”

“I don’t know! He won’t talk to us!” Annette lets out a small huff, throwing her arms up in the air. “He keeps telling us to leave him alone—like, I know he’s like that, but I mean he’s being like that _more than usual_ , y’know?—and he’s being all like, ‘do your work, Annette,’ and ‘stop asking pointless questions, Annette.’” She stops at the reserved table and gestures politely for Sylvain to take the seat, as if instinctual. “He’s crankier than usual!” Her eyes widen. “No, but get this! What’s weird is that he’s acting a little spacey. Y’know, he’ll get this weird look in his eyes and just kind of zone out sometimes.”

Sylvain furrows his brows. Being cold and kind of mean is just a Felix thing. Felix is cranky; he isolates himself; he stresses himself to the core and bottles it all up so no one can see, instead lashing out and keeping people at a distance. That’s just Felix. Sylvain knows that. If he’s acting a little meaner than usual, then maybe something’s happened in his personal life. Maybe it’s something to do with his family or his car or his favorite shirt or something.

The point is that it’s probably familiar—it’s something that Sylvain can probably handle, something he can probably make Felix forget with a few jokes and a few anecdotes.

But being spacey?

Felix isn’t the type to get lost in his thoughts like that. Sylvain doesn’t think he’s ever seen or heard of Felix acting like that before. His heart freezes in his chest. Guilt and fear that he’s done something, that he’s somehow involved in Felix’s issues, starts to well up in his heart.

“Sounds serious,” is all he can manage to say, giving Annette a worried look.

"I wish he’d just tell us what’s wrong. We’re his coworkers and his employees, but above all that, we’re also his friends!” Annette shakes her head.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get him to feel a little better.” Sylvain smiles at her, but deep in his heart, his confidence wavers. “I’ll talk to him.”

Annette and her innocent little eyes light up with joy, with relief, with excitement. “Thank you! Let me know if there’s anything we can do to help!” And with that, she’s gone, headed back towards the podium in the front of the restaurant.

To Sylvain’s surprise, Felix comes from the kitchen rather quickly enough.

Sylvain plasters on his best smile. “Hiya, Fe! So what do you have for me tonight?”

Felix blinks at him. A pause passes. Then he mutters, “It’s not that special,” as he places a covered platter of food before him. “Just a dish. From Varley.”

That pause. That empty look to his eyes.

Sylvain tries to play it off, tries to ignore the dazed look to his expression, but he won't deny that it leaves him feeling a few chills rolling up his spine, feeling concern for his friend crushing his heart. He hums. “An Adrestian dish? I see you’re adding more variety to your menu. Well, hey, I have no idea what it is yet, but I can tell you that it smells great.” He pats the table in front of him. “So? Let’s see her then. Come on, Fe. I’m hungry.”

That can’t be farther from the truth. Felix’s weird behavior is tying his stomach into tight knots, making him nauseous as all hell. He can’t even imagine swallowing a single bite of anything, nonetheless something gourmet that Felix whipped up for him.

Wordlessly—without even a single scoff or exasperated eyeroll—Felix places a dish before Sylvain and lingers. He doesn’t take the seat across from Sylvain like he typically does; he doesn’t give Sylvain a little more details on the dish. He stands and watches Sylvain, this strange, conflicted expression on his face.

The tension radiating off of Felix is making Sylvain uneasy, but he’s genuinely curious about what’s going on in Felix’s life to have him like this. “Sit. I’m sure your legs are tired.”

Felix quietly takes a seat.

Sylvain prods at his food, flicking his gaze up at Felix, only to find that Felix is watching him. There isn’t that bright, competitive look in his eyes. There’s something frustrated. Something sad. Something that Sylvain’s seen in his own reflection hundreds of thousands of times.

 _Loss_ , Sylvain tentatively thinks, _a feeling of loss._

“Hey, Felix, are you okay?”

Felix blinks. Those simple words are enough to pull Felix from his trance temporarily, Felix rolling his eyes and muttering, “Why wouldn’t I be?” but it’s not very convincing.

“You know we’re friends, right?” _Even if I wish we were something closer._ “You can tell me what’s bothering you.” Sylvain pauses. He knows Felix won’t take him up on the offer so he adds, “Annette’s been telling me that you’ve been acting weird.”

It brings a little more life into Felix. He groans. “She worries too much. I’m fine.”

“Just tired?”

Felix averts his gaze. “Something like that.”

“Meaning?”

“You ask too many questions. Just shut up and eat.”

Sylvain smiles a little and takes a bite of the dish. It’s like a blend between a meal and a dessert—a sort of savory tarte tatin, a hint of sweetness hiding amongst all the vegetables and the spices and the crumbled chevre atop the dish. It’s pleasantly warm in his mouth, not too hot nor too cold, and it’s chewy, zesty, delicate. It’s a great dish—but Sylvain can hardly concentrate on the flavors in his mouth.

Sylvain gives a hum of approval. “Amazing.”

His worries are still ruining him. They disintegrate the food in his mouth, leaving him with what feels like a mouthful of shredded paper, what tastes like a mouthful of ash. And what’s worse is that he can’t come up with anything witty to say to Felix, nothing to bring up the mood. He can’t even come up with a petty criticism, even though he’s sure that it’d make Felix smile at least a little.

( _Oh, how he misses that smile. This dazed, angry look to him is so awful._ Sylvain wants to just close his eyes, where instead of seeing Felix acting so out of it, he can imagine Felix wearing that tiny smile with a fond crinkle to his soft eyes, framed by those long, long lashes—)

He swallows his first bite and lifts his fork to get some more. He can’t bring himself to eat any more.

“Just say it’s bad.”

Sylvain blinks and looks up at Felix, surprised. There’s a familiar flash of frustration and disappointment in his eyes, but in typical Felix fashion, he masks it with a look of disgust and anger.

“I hate liars and kiss-asses,” he growls. “You know that so cut the shit and give it to me straight. If you hate it, fine. Tell me what’s wrong with it.”

“Felix, I’m the last person who’d lie to you.” Felix hesitates. _You know I’m telling the truth,_ Sylvain wants to say. _You know you want to believe me—so just do it._ Sylvain sighs. “It’s not bad.”

“What’d I just say?”

“I’m not lying, okay?” Sylvain sets his fork down. “I’m worried about you.” Before Felix has a chance to retort, Sylvain quickly continues, “I think you’re stressed about something.”

Felix goes silent. Sylvain’s onto something.

“You’re stressed,” Sylvain says slowly, trying to think of an idea to add onto his theory. _What’s Felix stressed about?_ Sylvain doesn’t know, but if he can’t remedy the issue, then maybe he can do what he does best—distract Felix with a good time. “I think I know just what you need.” He feels a small smile tugging on his lips. “You need a boys’ night.”

Felix stares at him. “A what,” he deadpans.

“You know. A night with the boys! Just you, me, and—well, I guess it could be just you and me unless you want me to bring along Ashe or Dimitri.” Sylvain shrugs, but his heart throbs hopefully in his chest at the thought of just him and Felix spending time together. “But work’s probably been getting to your head. I think that you need to just eat some trashy, takeout food, crack open a beer or two, and waste your time doing something fun with me!”

Felix crosses his arms. “No. Why would I ever what to do anything as asinine as spend time with you?”

“Ouch, Fe, you don’t have to be so harsh.” Sylvain pushes his bottom lip out in a playful pout, and Felix scoffs, wadding up a napkin and lobbing at him. Sylvain bats it out of the air before it bops him in the head. “I’m serious though.” His pout fades, leaving him solemn. “I know you said that whole thing about enjoying your job and not getting stressed over it, but you should really take a break.”

Felix sighs.

“You’re overworking yourself. And if you keep on like that, you’ll burn out.” Sylvain frowns. _We’ve had this conversation before,_ Sylvain wants to huff at him, _we both know you’re self-destructive in how hard you work, and we both know that there’s no way you can keep on like this forever._ “Listen,” Sylvain says, stopping whatever Felix’s about to say, “it doesn’t have to be a huge get-together or anything. You can just drop by my place and we can hang out.”

 _Don’t get too bold,_ Sylvain scolds himself. _He’s taken._

And just like that, like being dropped into a lake with cinderblocks tied to his feet, Sylvain sinks. Remembering Felix isn’t his—remembering that Felix is _just a friend_ —is grounding, and it’ll probably save him from stepping out of line, but it hurts nonetheless. He feels like he’s struggling to keep his head above water, like his poor lungs are soon to be waterlogged, heavy, useless.

“Think about it, okay?” he says.

Felix eyes Sylvain, a brisk up-and-down with his eyes. Then he sighs. “I’ll consider it,” he says slowly, as if even admitting this pains him. Sylvain brightens. “But I’m not making any promises. Now hurry up and eat. Your food’s getting cold.”

-

Conversation after that gets easier. Felix is still a little spacey, a little strange, a little stressed, but he keeps up with Sylvain’s smooth conversation rather easily. Sylvain manages to make him do this kind of half-smirk a few times throughout the night, which given his current mental state, Sylvain considers a huge victory.

By the end of the night, when the restaurant is no longer bustling with new customers and is instead bustling with workers quickly hurrying about and cleaning the place up, Sylvain finds that Felix looks a lot better. He’s almost back to being the same old Felix—scowls and sarcastic remarks, scoffs and snide smirks. Sylvain sticks around a little, helping a few of Felix’s workers to the best of his abilities, even though Felix insists that he should just _go home already_ and that The Lone Wolf _doesn’t need your charity._

Sylvain doesn’t mind though. He helps Bernadetta carry a few dishes back to the kitchen—or as close to the kitchen as they’ll let him without a hairnet on because, as Bernadetta insists, _i-it’s just a precautionary thing! we just want to be sure, sorry!_

“It’s really sweet that you’re helping us out,” she tells him over the soft clatter of the plates in the bin of the cart she pushes towards the kitchen. “I’m sure you know, but you, um, really don’t have to.”

Sylvain shrugs. “I mooch off you guys enough. It’s only fair, right?”

 _Plus, sticking around like this lets me keep a better eye on Felix. Speaking of Felix…_ Sylvain’s gaze wanders over to Felix. He’s surprised to see him talking with Annette, who is almost cartoonishly throwing a fit over something.

“We’re worried about you, you big idiot!” she’s huffing at him, and Felix rolls his eyes. “Don’t you give me that look, mister!”

“Don’t treat me like that. I’m not a kid.”

“You sure are acting like one!”

Felix gives her a look, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

“Oh geez,” Bernadetta mumbles, following his gaze. “Hopefully that’s nothing serious.” She smiles nervously, a skittish look. “Felix has been a little touchy lately.” She cringes. “Well, um, please don’t tell him I said that. It’d be great to, y’know, keep my job.” Under her breath, she adds, “I really like my job.”

Sylvain laughs. “No worries, Bernie. Won’t tell a soul.” He winks at her, and she lets out a small breath of relief.

Sylvain also lets Ashe hand him a rag with disinfectant on it so he can wipe down some tables. Ashe works quickly, diligently. Sylvain feels embarrassingly slow in how he’s working, but in his defense, he splitting his attention between the table in front of him and Felix, who’s across the room talking to a blond woman with short hair.

He strains his ears, but it’s no use. The woman’s voice is too soft, and Felix isn’t speaking very loudly.

Ashe bumps Sylvain with his hip and a small, cheeky smile.

“You can at least pretend to work if you’re just here to spy on Felix.”

Sylvain smiles. “I wouldn’t call it spying. Maybe something along the lines of, hmm, watching over him.” Sylvain gets back to scrubbing tables and neatly rearranging the ornaments in the center of the table anyway. “Besides, I actually want to help.”

Ashe hums softly, understandingly. “You seem really interested in our little restaurant.”

“I’d hardly call your restaurant little.”

Ashe laughs. “Okay, well, you seem really interested in our fancy restaurant here.” At Sylvain’s nod, he continues, “Why not ask Felix to work here? You don’t seem to mind putting in work like this.”

Sylvain pauses. Working at this restaurant? He’d never given it much thought. It makes sense in a way. He’d get to support his best friend’s dream job, and he could be a little selfish, catching little glimpses of Felix here and there and maybe even striking up conversation from time to time. It doesn’t seem that bad.

Yet, those pesky concerns from all those years ago return, like a swarm of locusts returning to ravish the land. _I don’t want to get in his way,_ the thoughts cry out. _I don’t want my feelings to hurt our friendship. I don’t want to get hurt._

“It’s something you should think about,” Ashe encourages gently, as if he can feel Sylvain’s apprehension. He plucks the washcloth from Sylvain’s hands. “I think we’re done for the night. You should go ahead and get home. It’s late.”

Sylvain watches as Ashe scurries into the kitchen. The kitchen doors swing open, and for a split second, Sylvain can see Ashe jump into the arms of a tall man, dressed in a similar kind of chef uniform as Felix. A brief peck on the cheek is exchanged with warm, lovey-dovey stares, and the doors shut, leaving Sylvain feeling strange.

(A slight bit of envy starts to boil his blood, but Sylvain shuts it out quickly enough.)

Annette pops up behind Sylvain and pokes him. “Hey. You’re still around?”

“Yeah, but I think I was just heading home.”

Annette puffs her cheeks out. “Well, can you convince Felix to go home already? We’ve got this handled, but he won’t leave!”

Sylvain smiles. “Leave it to me. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s weaseling my way out of responsibilities—so it’d be no sweat weaseling Felix out of his too,”

Annette laughs good-naturedly and pats him on the back. She probably has no idea how serious Sylvain is about that.

(He doesn’t want to think about that huge Gautier company he’d left behind. He doesn’t want to think about the piles and piles of paperwork his father had him work through during all hours of the day and the stress building on him for years and years, starting when he was just a young boy. He doesn’t want to think about how he had to verbally—and almost legally—fight his way out of that hellhole, out of his own family.)

Felix is still talking to the blonde woman by the time that Sylvain rounds the corner and nears them. The woman’s voice is high, soft, sweet—motherly and comforting. She speaks politely, calmly, soothingly.

“Work will be here for you tomorrow,” she’s telling him, reaching out a gentle hand and placing it on Felix’s shoulder.

Felix wrenches his shoulder away. “It doesn’t need to wait. And besides, it’s my business. Let me do what I want, Mercedes.”

 _Mercedes?_ Sylvain balks. _As in Felix’s girlfriend? This is her?_

Mercedes is, simply put, beautiful. With her short, blonde hair that comes in wispy little tufts and her kind, blue eyes, she looks as she sounds—soft, sweet, gentle. She’s dressed, too, in a chef uniform, fitted with the logo of The Lone Wolf. She works here, and seeing how she’s covered in smudges of icing here and there, Sylvain assumes she must work with the pastries. Sweet inside and out, it seems.

She spots Sylvain first, and she flashes him a smile.

( _Don’t be nice to me,_ Sylvain thinks bitterly. _It makes it so much harder to hate you._ )

“You must be Sylvain!” She holds out a hand. “I’m so very pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Mercedes.”

Sylvain flashes her his lady-killer smile. “Nice to meet you too, Mercedes.” He takes her hand and shakes it politely. “I’ve heard great things about you.”

“About me?” Her eyes go wide, and she tilts her head to the left. She seems to recover relatively quickly enough, smiling. “Oh my. That makes me happy to hear, but I’m sure I’m not as great as they make me out to be. I’m just a patissiere.”

( _Humble too? Is there anything to hate about you? Anything at all_?)

"Don’t be so fast to discredit yourself. I’m sure that a lovely lady like you has plenty of things to be proud of.”

She giggles. “My, my!”

Felix shoots him a sharp look. A scathing look. Sylvain winces. He’s really treading the line here, and he knows it. He didn't mean for it to slip out like that, but he supposes that old habits die hard and that he's doing what he can to protect what's left of his crumbling heart. There's nothing to gain from flirting with Felix's girlfriend but Felix's ire and Mercedes's disapproval, but he's not thinking straight, and he's feeling frantic, panicky, distressed.

( _It's true._ Sylvain's despondence hits him like a truck then. It finally settles in. _He's dating someone. He doesn't need me. He's never needed me. I'm still holding on to feelings from years and years and_ years _ago, acting like a damn fool. I don't even have my act together, seeing that I'm already slipping back into meaningless flirting again, just to get attention and acceptance and some sort of_ love. What _do I do about this? What_ can _I even do? This is honestly the worst.)_

"Anyway, I came by to tell you that I’m heading home, Felix.” Sylvain turns his gaze away from Mercedes. His chest aches at the sight of Felix—so close, yet so indescribably and so unfairly far.

Felix shrugs. “Okay. Goodnight.”

“You’re staying? It’s pretty late.”

Mercedes hums. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him, but he seems set on staying.”

“Come on, Felix, listen to your girl. She wants you to head home.” Sylvain throws an arm around Felix’s shoulders. His heart hurts. It fucking hurts. He knows he’s doing this to himself, but he just can’t help it.

 _When I get home,_ he promises himself, _when I get home, I’ll get over this. I’ll mope and mourn everything that we could have been, everything I wished we were. But until then…_

Felix gives him a weird look before swatting Sylvain’s arm off him. “I’m fine. I don’t need to listen to her. Or you. Or anyone else. I’ll do what I want.”

Sylvain sighs. “You make things so hard.” He looks around the restaurant. “If you won’t leave, then I won’t either.”

Felix glares. “What? No. Leave.”

“Nope.” Sylvain pops his ‘p’ and promptly takes a seat at one of the empty tables, spreading his legs out so his feet are resting in the seat across from him. He leans back a little in his chair and folds his arms behind his head comfortably. He smiles cheekily at Felix. “So go home or we both suffer here.”

"You’re a brat.”

Sylvain feigns a hurt gasp. “Is that any way to speak to your elder?”

“Don’t talk like you’re that much older than me. You're two years older. It’s not some huge gap." Felix shakes his head. "Not important. Just leave already.” Felix makes his way to Sylvain’s side and crosses his arms. “I’ll call the cops on you. For loitering. Trespassing. Whichever gets you in more trouble. Try me.”

“Didn’t take you for a snitch, Fe.”

Felix growls. “You.”

Sylvain laughs. “I told you—I’m not leaving until you are. Even if that lasts until tomorrow. You stay; I stay.”

With one, long-suffering sigh, Felix folds a little, a dramatic wheeze where he bends forward a little. He stands upright and puts a hand on his hip. “You are completely and utterly insufferable.”

“Oh, I know.”

Felix flicks his gaze to Mercedes, who is now standing beside Annette and Ashe, chatting with them about something. Their gazes all snap to Felix when he grabs Sylvain by the arm and pulls him up to his feet. Sylvain nearly falls out of his chair, but Felix easily steadies him and glares up at him. “Fine. Just shut up already and get up. We’re leaving.”

“That worked?!” Annette squawks.

Sylvain winks at her as Felix tosses his keys at Ashe with a curt nod. He grabs Sylvain by the arm and practically drags him out of the restaurant.

“You’re one stubborn bastard,” Felix mutters under his breath, pushing open the restaurant doors and letting go of Sylvain. Sylvain grins.

“I could say the same about you.” Sylvain shrugs as they walk out onto the parking lot together. It’s silent, but just like the other times with them together, it’s comfortable. Even if there’s a deep pain, a wicked tear forming in Sylvain’s heart, it’s comfortable.

“You’ll think about it though, right?” Sylvain asks, changing the subject.

“What?”

“You know—hanging out. Relieving stress.” Sylvain holds his breath a little as they near Felix’s car. “Like I said, it definitely doesn’t have to be anything huge. Just a hangout with you, me, and whoever you want to bring along. You can even bring Mercedes if that’ll make you happy or comfortable or whatever.”

 _She's nice,_ Sylvain muses. _I can play nice for a night, even if it hurts. I mean, I just did, right? Kind of?_

Felix fixes him with a flat stare. “Uh-huh,” he says slowly before stopping.

Sylvain stops to face him. Even in the shoddy lighting of the streetlamps in this parking lot, even with cool moonlight drizzling down upon him alongside the warm streetlight, even with his hair a ruffled mess and his clothes stained and wrinkled, Felix looks so breathtaking there with him. Sylvain just kind of wants to take Felix’s small hands in his own, to lean forward as their eyes both flutter shut and—

 _You can’t, you can’t, you can’t_ , a voice in his head taunts. _He’s not yours. He’s never been yours. He’ll never be yours. He has someone else now._

“Sylvain. You… seem to have something mixed up.”

“I do?”

"Mercedes and I—we aren’t… You know.” Felix gestures vaguely. Sylvain blinks at him. Felix sighs loudly. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Sylvain, Mercedes and I are not dating.”

Sylvain stares. And stares. And stares some more. Very gracefully, Sylvain manages a small, “Huh?”

Felix pinches the bridge of his nose. “Leave it to _you_ to find connections that don’t exist.” He rests a fist on his hip and narrows his eyes. “I have no idea how you managed to get this idea, but she and I aren’t dating. At all. We’re nowhere near dating.”

Sylvain feels his heart jump. He quells his hope to the best of his ability. Just because he isn’t dating Mercedes doesn’t mean that Felix is single. In fact, there could be someone else that Sylvain has no idea about. Maybe it’s one of the other girls at the restaurant. They’re all nice, cute, kind. They’re all brimming with personality. And they all seem to respect him.

Felix gives him a look. “You’re thinking something stupid again, aren’t you?”

Sylvain laughs. It sounds a little forced at first, but it quickly becomes something genuine, something happy. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t kill that flicker of hope in his chest. It reignites over and over and over, and it drives him nuts.

 _Do you know what you’re doing to me?_ Sylvain wonders. _Do you know what you’ve done?_

“No,” Sylvain tells Felix. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never had a stupid thought in my life.”

“Liar.”

Sylvain grins. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with a little, white lie.”

“That’s not a ‘little, white lie’ at all. That’s…” Felix considers this before deciding to go with, “That’s a stupidly catastrophic lie. You’re a liar.”

Sylvain shrugs. “Call it what you will,” he says, a carefree pep to his step as he starts towards Felix’s car. “Come on. It’s dark. You should get home.”

Felix sighs and gets to his car. The car’s taillights flash as he unlocks his car. Sylvain waits for Felix to get in his car before bidding him a goodnight. He makes sure Felix actually leaves the parking lot before getting in his own car and driving home.

-

Sylvain gets his answer from Felix in the form a text the very next morning, at some ungodly time, probably after one of Felix's morning workouts. It’s a short, curt message, but Sylvain’s endlessly happy to see it nonetheless.

 _I’m free this weekend,_ the text says.

Sylvain feels like a lovestruck schoolgirl seeing that text. His heart flutters, and he feels strange, silly, soft. He reads the message over again, as if to make sure—as if Felix will change his mind and take back his text if Sylvain keeps doubting himself—before telling Felix that they’ll figure out more details come Saturday for their night together.

Their night together? No, they’re just hanging out as friends. It’s not a date or anything like that. Just a hangout session between two best friends. Between two guys, one of which is devastatingly handsome and devastatingly charming in his own cold way and the other who is devastatingly, stupidly, catastrophically in love with him.

Sylvain grimaces. That little note of hope from learning that Felix isn't dating Mercedes is doing crazy things to him.

He hopes he can keep it together this Saturday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sylvain and felix's boys' night, coming soon ~~hopefully~~ to an ao3 fic near you! :D 
> 
> i know i don't really update this fic much, but i'm getting back into it! i feel like i've _really_ missed a lot of opportunities to go ham with the actual food and blog part of this story so i've been a bit discouraged from writing it. ;-; ~~it's like the whole premise of the story, how did i manage?~~
> 
> even so, i'm hoping to try and write through this feeling! i'll do my best to write this the way i planned, and if not, i suppose i can always try to remake it at some point haha,, q_q 
> 
> as always, you have my deepest thanks for reading my fic!! (and if you've read through this little note, thank you for reading through my dumb little ramblings haha c:)


	6. but babe! saturdays are for the boys!

Sylvain can’t stop staring at his reflection. He tousles his hair one way, frowns, then ruffles it to part it another way. He pulls at his jacket to straighten it, smooths out his shirt with his hands, and takes a few steps back to look at himself.

 _What am I doing?_ he eventually thinks with a sigh, flicking his gaze to his phone. _This isn’t a date. It’s just me hanging out with a friend._ His thoughts settle to a pause, but one little voice tries to reason, _Well, I just want to look good regardless of who I’m hanging out with._

With that as his excuse for spending so much time getting ready to hang out with Felix, he continues preening in the mirror for a little longer—he has to get that perfect, messy look! who knew such an “effortless” look would take so much work?—before getting a text from Felix asking when Sylvain plans on coming. Sylvain shoots him a quick text saying that he’s on his way, glances at himself in the mirror, and grabs his keys, his phone, and his wallet, stuffing them in his pocket as he heads out of his apartment.

He drives to the address that Felix listed and finds a surprisingly average home. Sylvain’s curious as to how it looks on the inside. It’s certainly bigger than his apartment, but knowing Felix and seeing how he thinks especially in regards to things like his car— _as long as it works, it’s fine_ —the interior may be entirely undecorated. Blank white walls, empty spaces of hardwood flooring, empty closets—it might as well be one of those stereotypical horror movie asylums at that point.

Sylvain’s apartment feels _too_ decorated, especially considering that he’s the only one living there, and he could definitely afford a house like Felix’s, but living alone in such a large space sounds miserable. He wonders how Felix can deal with it. Any sound you make would carry throughout the house, and all that cleaning—God, _all the cleaning_ —would feel so tiring. One person cleaning a house meant for around four people; it’s just disproportionate.

The passenger door of Sylvain’s car opens, and Sylvain jumps, pulled from his thoughts. He hadn’t even noticed that Felix was standing outside, waiting for him to pull into the driveway.

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain greets, turning down the music playing over his speakers a little. His eyes greedily linger over Felix, who’s dressed in a slick, leather jacket and a pair of ripped jeans. His clothes are sleek and slimming, and Sylvain can barely pick up a hint of cologne.

 _Is Felix dressed up more than usual_? he wonders. He had half-expected Felix to show up in his work clothes or athletic wear. It would be like when they were in college again—Sylvain would beg Felix to go buy clothes with him and wear something other than a hoodie and a pair of shorts, only for Felix to throw on a pair of compression pants underneath his shorts and give him a flat look. _Those leggings were kind of a really,_ really _nice touch,_ Sylvain admits shamefully, _but he could have worn literally anything else. His fashion sense was kind of atrocious then. I guess it’s changed over the years._

(Sylvain absent-mindedly wonders who helped him change his wardrobe. If Felix hadn’t listened to him, his closest friend since childhood, back when they were in college together, then whose advice would he have taken? Was there someone else in Felix’s life? Not Mercedes, but maybe someone else? Maybe someone in some other time? A past lover? _A closer friend_? Jealousy sparks like a sickening candle in Sylvain’s chest at the thought, but more than that, he feels kind of hurt. He desperately hopes that Felix hadn’t replaced him with some other friend.)

Felix just nods at him, but the typical terse look to his eyes isn’t quite there. “So. What did you plan for us to do?” Felix asks, reaching over and buckling his seatbelt. “You were really vague.”

Sylvain smiles a little. He had purposefully kept Felix in the dark because he knew that Felix might have some opinions on what they were doing. He had simply asked if Felix wanted to invite anyone else— _no, it could just be us,_ Felix had replied over text—and if he wanted to spend the afternoon together.

So what they’re doing is less of a boys’ night, as Sylvain had jokingly told Felix at The Lone Wolf, and more of a boys’ afternoon. But he isn’t planning to let Felix slip away after a lunch together. He asked Felix to clear his entire schedule from the afternoon to night, and Felix had actually complied with little question. He was probably curious as to what Sylvain wanted to do too.

“For now, we’re headed downtown. You hungry?”

Felix shrugs. “I guess.”

Sylvain laughs. “And _I’m_ the vague one?”

Felix gives him a look, flat yet touched with what Sylvain can only describe as the tiniest hint of embarrassment. “Don’t be stupid. You’re just as vague as I am.”

Sylvain hums. “Whatever you say.” He starts to pull out of Felix’s driveway. “You have a pretty, uh, _average_ house,” Sylvain comments as he starts to take them into downtown Faerghus.

“Yeah. I’m not going to go out of my way to spend exorbitant amounts of money just so I can live on my own.”

 _You could live with me._ Sylvain quickly pushes the thought out of his head— _stop being weird! he’s just a friend!—_ and just laughs good-naturedly. It’s a very Felix answer. It’s also one that he expected.

“I thought you’d say that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sylvain just flashes Felix a brief smile before turning his gaze to the street. “Means what it means, Fe. I just thought you’d say that.”

“Whatever.”

The ride into downtown Faerghus isn’t very eventful. Felix stares out the window, seemingly content to listen to whatever Sylvain throws on the speakers—and telling him, _your music taste sucks,_ when something he doesn’t like comes on, drawing a laugh from Sylvain. The silences in the car aren’t very awkward, but they happen more than one would think.

Well, maybe that kind of thinking is common for other people, but not Sylvain. He knows Felix isn’t very talkative. He does most of the talking between them, and Felix listens. Felix is great at a lot of things, but he’s always been a great listener. He looks and acts uninterested, but he always has advice, comments, or a related story, regardless of how curtly he says them or how short they are.

So the ride is just like any of their conversations, in-person or over text. Sylvain brings up lots of his own stories and jokes and thoughts, and Felix listens, occasionally adding his own story or a criticism or an a agreement.

But it’s a little different than usual. Felix seems determined to… do more somehow. He reacts more, speaks more, _laughs_ more. It drives Sylvain’s heart crazy whenever he draws a smile or a laugh from Felix.

 _Huh. Well, I know I’m not that funny,_ Sylvain thinks as Felix chuckles at something he’d said, an anecdote of something that happened while he was blogging about his food. _Are you playing up your reactions? You didn’t do this before._ Paranoia strikes him briefly, stopping his heart for a split second. _Did I do something? Are you faking your reactions? Are you going to treat me like my exes did?_

Sylvain wills away the paranoia and smiles it off. He’ll address that concern later when he isn’t spending time with his best friend. And besides, Felix looks and sounds like he’s having a good time genuinely. His laughs sound genuine; his smiles don’t look forced.

Felix has always been kind of bad at lying. At least he has been to Sylvain.

(Sylvain hopes that that hasn’t changed over the years.)

Parking in any city is hell, but Faeghus especially seems like the worst place to park. Cars cram themselves in every little space that they can possibly find on the roads and in gravel lots, and signs are everywhere, warning of fines and towing in big, bold, red text, often accompanied with one of those black-and-white stock images of a car getting towed. Sylvain has to circle around a few roads and a few buildings before he can find a spot to park his car.

“I hate parking,” Felix says, a little stiltedly, a little awkwardly. It’s a clumsy attempt at starting conversation, Sylvain knows, but it’s an attempt nonetheless. Sylvain smiles a little. “I’d rather walk.”

“You live too far from downtown Faerghus to walk,” Sylvain points out, and Felix huffs.

“Public transit exists.”

“Does public transit even go out to where you live?”

Felix pauses, and after much consideration, Felix simply states, “No, but I can just drive to a bus stop or something.”

Sylvain laughs. “Then just drive here! Save yourself the effort of driving then taking a bus and _then_ walking.”

Felix just clicks his tongue, but there’s a faint smile on his lips. Sylvain quickly averts his gaze to the road before them, knowing that his face will turn as red as his hair if he keeps staring at that adorable little half-smile.

Eventually, he puts his car in park, just barely securing himself a spot—a pissed off driver gives him a dirty look as she passes the spot that he parked in only a few seconds before she got there—and he smiles at Felix.

“Here’s our first stop.”

Felix looks around. “Wow. A parking lot,” he drawls. “This was such a good investment of time and definitely not a waste of my weekend.”

Sylvain huffs playfully, shutting off his engine. “No, not the parking lot.” He eases his pout into a small smile. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”

Sylvain and Felix step onto the sidewalks of Faerghus. It isn’t particularly busy at this hour, but they both know that it’ll get much more crowded at the evening when people are out hopping from bar to bar or simply looking for places to eat and spend time with friends. It _is_ the weekend, after all.

“I know that someone of your stature might get lost with all these people around,” Sylvain teases as they wait at a crosswalk, “but I’ll try to walk slow enough for you to keep up, okay?”

Felix swats at him; it’s not hard enough to hurt but it’s enough to get his annoyance across—a playful swat to the arm, kind of in the same way that a cat at your hand when you pet them to try and play. “Keep talking like that, and I’ll break your kneecaps,” Felix huffs.

Sylvain laughs. “Then would we be the same height?”

Felix wrinkles his nose, a bitter look on his face, but Sylvain can still sense the easygoing, playful attitude. “Shut up.”

After a few minutes of walking through Faerghus, of Sylvain pointing out interesting restaurants and stores with Felix mostly answering that he hasn't heard of them before or that they don't really appeal to him, of Felix asking where in the world they're both headed to, they finally reach a restaurant. Felix stares up at the windows of the restaurant, where posters of the menu and advertisements of big deals going on are plastered for all to see. He gives Sylvain a flat look.

“You brought me out to eat _burgers_?”

“Hey, these are the best burgers in Faerghus!” Sylvain holds the door open for Felix. “Plus, you can’t eat all that gourmet stuff all the time, you know. Sometimes, you should let yourself eat some garbage food.”

Felix sighs. “That explains your _terrible_ taste in food.”

“I like what you make, though,” Sylvain points out.

“Yeah, with more salt,” Felix scoffs. “Other than that, your taste is food is atrocious.” He steps into the restaurant anyway, Sylvain following closely behind with a small smile.

They both order their food, both getting the newest option on the menu, and they find a place to sit, a booth near one of those large windows that face out towards the rest of the downtown Faeghus area. Much to Felix’s surprise, Sylvain takes out his phone and snaps a photo of his food—and then snaps a photo of Felix, who is already biting into his food. Felix reacts too late, reaching for Sylvain’s phone after he had taken the picture.

“Delete it,” Felix demands, a slight tint of pink to his cheeks and ears. 

“Nope! I’m making memories.”

"Of _what_? Me eating? Just delete it."

"Nah."

" _Sylvain_."

Sylvain, with a childish smirk to his lips, holds his phone above his head, daring Felix to try and get it. After a quick glance around, Felix wisely decides not to make a commotion by lunging across the table at Sylvain to get his phone and lets out a sigh, raising his burger to his lips again.

“Whatever. At least warn me before you start taking pictures, you nuisance,” he mutters. “And don’t even _think_ about posting that anywhere.”

 _Why? I think you look good all the time._ Sylvain flicks his gaze down to his phone, scrolling through the pictures he recently took. As he expected, Felix looks good even in this picture. He’s not looking up, but he looks serene as he eats. _This is unfair. No one should look_ this _good when eating junk food._

“Well, can I post it if I blur your face?”

“Don’t post it anywhere, period.”

Sylvain pouts playfully. “But Fe! It’s going on my food blog!”

Felix halts his hands, his burger lingering right in front of his lips. He lowers his food a little; he raises an eyebrow. “What?”

Sylvain smiles. “I’m trying out this place’s newest burger—and you are too since you got the same thing as me. I just wanted to write a quick review.”

 _Sorry, Dima,_ Sylvain thinks, _you won’t be in this next review, even though you’re like the subject of the whole blog._ Sylvain knows his fans might not mind, but Dimitri does tend to bring in bigger numbers—and he might feel a little left out that he’s not in it, but Dimitri doesn’t seem to care that much about his presence on Sylvain’s blog anyway.

Felix grunts. “So? You took a picture of your food. Use that instead. Don’t use my face in your food review.”

Sylvain shrugs. “Okay, fine.” He waits a beat. “But do you want to give me your feedback on the food?”

Felix stares at Sylvain. He scoffs, but he smiles, a sly look. “How mean can I be?”

Sylvain blinks owlishly. He hadn’t actually expected Felix to say yes. He expected Felix to say something along the lines of _review food in your own time_ and _don’t waste my time with your stupid blog_. Instead, he gets Felix’s cooperation, his interest.

Sylvain barks out a little laugh. “Be as mean as you want! I’m sure I’ll get the criticism for it so say anything you want.”

“If you’re worried about criticism, just say I said it.” Felix bites into his burger. “It’d be true anyway.”

Sylvain smiles. “If you insist.” He picks up his own burger and bites into it. He flicks his gaze up at Felix and finds him staring. Sylvain blinks and cocks his head, a silent _what?_

“It’s not bad,” Felix says slowly.

“It’s a little salty though.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “It’s fast food. What do you expect?” He pops a fry into his mouth and immediately winces. “God, I can _feel_ my blood pressure rising eating this. Who salted these fries? I think I’ve swallowed sea water that’s less salty.”

Sylvain just laughs. This reminds him of all those cooking shows Felix has been on, where he’s paid to act mean to all the contestants. Sylvain’s watched a few of those in his free time after he realized Felix was in Faerghus again. It was quite entertaining, but Sylvain doesn’t think he’d be able to handle it if Felix said half of those things to his face—and meant it.

“Any other comments?” Sylvain muses, typing Felix’s commentary in his phone’s notes app.

Felix hums and takes another bite. “Bread’s a little burnt,” he mutters, and he flips the bun of the burger up, showing a few dark splotches. He sets it back and chews a little more. “And the sauce would taste better with a little more sugar.” A small pause. “Less black pepper.” Another pause. “Less vinegar too.” He pauses once more before adding, with an air of finality, “And I think that it’d be pretty good with a dash of hot sauce, but that could just be personal preference, I guess.”

Sylvain whistles. “That’s a professional opinion for you, huh?”

Felix scoffs. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’ve spent my life doing this. Of course I have opinions on this.” He waits a beat. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s pretty good for a burger.” Sylvain bites into it, and he hopes he doesn’t look too ravenous. He’s been putting off eating all day so he could eat with Felix. “I personally realy like burgers with bacon in ‘em, and the mushrooms are really good. I think they could have cooked my mushrooms a little longer and maybe my patty too, but it’s pretty good otherwise.” He takes another bite of his burger and savors the flavor. “I like the sauce. It’s missing something, but it’s not bad.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Sugar. It’s missing sugar.” Felix still eats his food, despite his complaints. “If you wanted a burger, you could have just said so. I could something better than this in my sleep.”

Sylvain frowns at that. “The whole point of hanging out is so you _don’t_ have to cook,” Sylvain points out. “You’ve been stressing with work so just relax and let people cook for you.”

Felix sighs. “I’m not stressed over work.”

“But you’re stressed.”

Felix doesn’t reply.

“You are,” Sylvain repeats, his tone just a touch softer, “so just try to have some fun, okay? Forget whatever’s bothering you—unless you want to talk about it.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Didn’t think so.” It’s sad how fast Felix had said that, but Sylvain thinks he would reacted in a similar way, though a little less blunt. Seems that even after all this time, they both struggle with opening up, huh? “It’s not bad though, is it?” Sylvain asks, gesturing at Felix’s food. He winces a little. “If it is, we can go somewhere else.”

Felix shakes his head. “I have my criticisms, but it’s edible.” He frowns. “No, I mean, it’s… It’s not bad.”

“You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying. I mean it. I like it.” As if to prove a point, Felix starts eating his burger. Sylvain only sighs a little and smiles.

“Hope you’re being honest. I wouldn’t want you trying to escape your worried by eating something you don’t like.” Sylvain rests his cheek against his fist, leaning his head a little against his propped up arm. “Food should be comforting. At least, that’s what I think.”

 _It’s a little pathetic, but food’s what helped me through some of my worst times,_ Sylvain thinks a little self-deprecatingly. _Dimitri pulled me out to start eating with him after he saw me start to spiral downwards. And while we were eating together and having a nice time chatting, that’s when I remembered Dimitri’s hypogeusia and had that idea to start that blog. It’s brought me some of my happier memories and helped me to feel a little better._

“Food is comforting,” Felix agrees. “Both making it and eating it. It’s good.” He and Sylvain lock eyes. “So believe me. I don’t mind the food here.”

Sylvain smiles.

-

Lunch is relatively tame. They eat burgers and chat. They leave the restaurant with their stomachs warm and full and with their faces both wearing smiles. Sylvain takes Felix around the downtown area on a nice stroll before taking him to a cat café.

"I know you like cats,” Sylvain prefaces as they step into the building, ignoring how Felix opens his mouth to deny it, “so I thought that this would be kind of fun to visit.”

Felix hesitates but cuts off his protests and follows wordlessly. Sylvain watches Felix’s expression carefully as they push past the door and find an immaculately decorated café, fit with warm string lights that stand out against the dark brick walls and a variety of colorful cat toys. Along some of the walls and hanging from the ceilings, there are wooden steps and paths, wide enough for the cats to walk along. It smells strongly of sweets and coffee.

Felix’s eyes lock onto a few cats that are contentedly lying on a few plush pillows on the ground, batting at a toy that another customer waves above them. Though he tries to suppress it, there’s a very obvious sparkle of amusement in his eyes.

Sylvain nudges Felix forward towards the register so that they can pay the admission fee to play with the cats. They both pay the small fee and enter. Felix looks over at he display of baked goods and coffee.

“Do you want anything? I can get you something if you want to go grab a spot or something.” _And by something, I mean play with the cats._ Sylvain smiles at the thought of Felix crouching in front of a few cats, waving one of those toy wands with a feather or a doll at the end of it.

“Don’t care what you get me; just don’t get me anything sweet.”

Sylvain nods and heads to the register, looking over the menu. His gaze slides from the menu to Felix, who is headed towards a table. A cat follows him curiously, and when Felix stops to acknowledge the kitty, it rubs its side against him, probably purring. Felix smiles and crouches down to pet it.

Sylvain chuckles a little to himself and turns to make his order. He gets himself some passionfruit bubble tea and getting Felix a silver needle white tea. After he receives his orders, he heads back to Felix, now sitting at a table, with the drinks in his hands. He hands Felix the drink.

“White tea,” Felix notes with a small nod of approval. He sips it, and his expression eases a little. “Not bad.” He looks to Sylvain’s drink. “What’s that?”

“Passionfruit bubble tea,” Sylvain says. He sips through the large, colorful straw and chews thoughtfully on the boba pearls before continuing, “It’s pretty good.” Impulsively, and half as a joke, Sylvain holds his drink out towards Felix. “Wanna try some?”

What happens next happens too fast for Sylvain to properly process it.

First, Sylvain’s hand falters a little, starting to pull away to signify that he’s mostly joking. Second, Felix makes an odd expression, one that Sylvain still doesn't know how to interpret, even after this has all happened. Third, Felix quickly grabs the hand holding the plastic cup of bubble tea, his smaller hand grazing Sylvain’s hand. His hand is warm, calloused but kind of soft, gentle. He pulls the drink closer.

Then, Felix leans forward and takes of a sip of the drink. Felix’s lips part gently around the straw; his hair falls forward a little and frames his face before he tucks it back behind his ear. Sylvain’s breath leaves his body, and he tenses, as if not to ward Felix away.

 _He’s pretty_ , Sylvain thinks. His brain unhelpfully wonders if Felix would look like that if he kissed him, his soft lips parting just a touch as his hair falls forward—wonders how Felix’s calm expression would change, if his cheeks would burn red and if the blush would spread from his cheeks to his ears to his neck and shoulders. _He’s really pretty._

Sylvain, with his heart racing in his chest and his face reddening, stares dumbfounded as Felix sips the drink and pulls away, making a face.

“It’s still too sweet for my tastes,” Felix says, drinking his tea as if to wash out the taste of the bubble tea. “Not bad, but not for me.”

Sylvain stares.

And stares.

And stares,

“Sylvain?” Felix raises an eyebrow. "Hello?" He waves a hand in front of Sylvain's reddening face. 

Sylvain composes himself for a split second, masking his expression with something a little more neutral. “I thought you didn’t mind citrusy flavors.”

Felix shrugs. “I don’t mind them, but this one has sugar added to it. Too much sugar.” Felix sets his tea on the table and pauses. “Hold on. Is that…?” He narrows his eyes. “It is.” He pushes away from the table and heads towards someone.

Meanwhile, Sylvain lifts his drink to his lips with trembling hands and finds himself too flustered to be able to drink. He feels like the characters from those cartoons that Ingrid used to watch in middle school, where his face is bright red and his hair rises in the same way that a cat’s hackles raise. Sylvain’s face only grows hotter when he thinks, just like those characters, _Is this considered an indirect kiss?!_

“Hi there!” Sylvain shifts his gaze and finds Ashe and a tall man that Sylvain recognizes from the other night at the restaurant— _that must be his husband, Dedue—_ standing at the tableside with Felix. “Didn’t think I’d see either of you around here.” He chuckles a little. “Small world, huh?”

Sylvain pulls himself out of his thoughts and greets Ashe and Dedue with a beaming grin. “Hey. Strange running into you guys here.” He turns to Dedue. “Ah. You must be Ashe’s husband. I’m Sylvain. I’m an acquaintance of Ashe.”

"Acquaintance? No need to be so cold, Sylvain.” Ashe smiles. “I know you better than that, I feel.”

Sylvain laughs. “My bad.” He looks to Dedue. “I’m a friend of Ashe.” Ashe beams with delight at this change.

Dedue nods with a small smile. “I’ve heard of a lot about you from Ashe and Felix. It's finally nice to put a face to the name. Pleased to meet you, Sylvain. I’m Dedue.” He holds out his hand, and Sylvain shakes it. 

"You had a hand in teaching Felix that Duscur dish, right?" Sylvain smiles. "It was really great. I haven't had anything like it."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it. Ashe had explained that Felix wanted some variety, and that dish was what landed me a job at The Lone Wolf." Dedue smiles down at Ashe, a soft fondness to his gaze. "So now I can work with Ashe." When he looks back to Sylvain, his gaze goes from soft and caring to something alarmed. “Are you okay?” he asks. “You look… unwell.”

Ashe blinks and briefly looks up at his tall husband. “Oh! You’re right!” He gives Sylvain a concerned look. “I wasn't really going to say anything, but you've been kind of red since we showed up. Um, are you sick or something?”

Sylvain flushes a little more. _Is it that obvious? I hope that Felix doesn’t think much of it…_

“He’s not sick.” Felix takes his seat across from Sylvain. “At least, I don’t think he is.”

 _Oh, I’m sick alright. I’m lovesick._ Sylvain cringes internally at himself. _Okay, that was bad, even for my standards._

"I don’t think I’m sick,” Sylvain says. “I feel fine. But thanks for the concern.” He smiles at Ashe and Dedue. The married couple share a look. Sylvain has no idea what they’re conveying to each other, but they both end up wearing the same, _knowing_ smile by the end of this little exchange.

“Anyway,” Felix cuts in abruptly, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your date. I just thought I should say something.”

Ashe laughs. “We don’t mind! Dedue hasn’t properly had a chance to meet Sylvain anyway so this was nice.” Ashe takes Dedue’s hand in his own and leans in against him. Dedue smiles. “But we were on our way out so we’ll go ahead and take our leave.”

“It was nice meeting you, Sylvain.” Dedue nods at him. “We’ll leave you to your date.”

Sylvain nearly spits out his drink; Felix looks just as surprised.

“We’re not—”

“I’m not—we’re not…”

Both of them stutter and step all over one another's words in their effort to try to correct him, but Ashe only laughs and pulls Dedue away, waving as they leave the cat café.

 _Dedue had said that so matter-of-factly,_ Sylvain thinks. _Did it really look like a date to him? Well, Ashe was acting weird. He planned this, I think. He knows, uh,_ something _, I guess…_ Sylvain cringes. _Maybe he caught on that I have a crush on Felix. I hope he doesn’t give anything away._ A pause. _I hope_ I _don’t give anything away._

“Ignore them,” Felix mutters. Sylvain looks at him and is shocked to see Felix just as flustered as him, his face red despite his irritated expression. “I expected something like that from Ashe, but… not Dedue.” Felix clicks his tongue. “Looks like they’ve been spending too much time with Annette.”

"They're just pulling a prank. Nothing evil." Sylvain just laughs. “If spending time with Annette makes you into more of a fun person, you should definitely spend more time with her."

Felix clicks his tongue again. “You act like I don’t rot my brain spending time with you too.” He huffs, giving Sylvain a small glare. “You’re just as bad as she is, if not worse.”

“Rude.” Sylvain smiles anyway.

-

They spend some time playing with the cats. It’s mostly Felix petting the cats and picking up a bunch of different toys to try and gain their attention. Sylvain pets some cats, but his gaze can never stay on the cats too long. It always drifts back to Felix and the softened expression on his face, the fondness in his eyes.

 _I wish he’d look at me like that,_ Sylvain can’t help but to think, but he chastises himself for that quickly enough. _Am I really getting jealous over a bunch of cats? That's so sad._

At least Felix lets him take pictures of him here.

Okay, that isn’t entirely true. Sylvain has to tell Felix that he’s taking pictures of the cats, and even then, Felix tries to slip out of the view of the camera.

“Just hold her still,” Sylvain tells Felix.

“Take a picture of her when I’m not playing with her,” Felix retorts.

“But she looks so cute right now.”

“She looks exactly the same as when she was wandering around.”

“But _Felix_.”

Felix eventually gives in and stops trying to dip and dodge out of the frame. Sylvain manages to snap a few good pictures of the cats, the decoration of the café, their drinks—and Felix.

When their time runs out, Sylvain leads them out of the cat café and into a nearby movie theater. Sylvain pays for their admission into the theater so they can watch the newest movie that critics are raving about. Coincidentally, it's a movie that Dimitri has a part in so Sylvain can finally give Dimitri that review on the movie that he's been meaning to for a while now.

Felix insists that he doesn't want any snacks, but as they watch the movie, he sneaks across the seats towards Sylvain and grabs a handful of popcorn. When Sylvain protests, Felix just gives him a flat look and takes another handful.

"If you wanted to share, you could have just said so," Sylvain jokes, putting the popcorn bag between them. _But I don't know if I'll be able to handle you drinking from my soda, though_.

They watch the movie.

(It's a pretty good movie. It's got the essentials: action, drama, romance. The plot is a little weak in places, but Sylvain isn't a movie critic; he's a food critic. He has little to say about the movie.

But speaking of romance, Dimitri plays the love interest and the villain. If Sylvain weren't entirely enamored with Felix, he might have caught feelings for Dimitri right from this very film. He was impossibly charming as the love interest, and he plays that evil character so well. 

Dimitri better not have anything important going on. Sylvain's going to bombard his phone with all his thoughts on the movie as soon as he's done spending time with Felix.)

Felix seems to recognize Dimitri on-screen. He asks about him after the movie, and Sylvain laughs.

"I can't believe you didn't recognize him coming in to your restaurant. He's a huge star." Sylvain smiles. "That's why my food blog is so popular. People are there for special Dima content."

Felix rolls his eyes. "I'm sure there are people there for you. I mean, Annette freaked out when she realized you were reviewing our place."

Sylvain rolls his shoulders in a small half-shrug. "I don't think there are that many people here for me, but I don't really care that much. It's fun to keep up with Dimitri's hypogeusia through my blog."

Felix gives him a look, but Sylvain doesn't particularly notice it, leading Felix out of the theater.

By the time that they leave the theater, it’s becoming evening. The sun starts to settle against the cityscape, painting everyone and everything in a warm, gold and orange glow. People are slowly starting to fill the streets. In the more populated parts of Faerghus, large groups of people are already coming out to hang out.

The sidewalks aren’t wide enough for everyone. As Sylvain leads Felix to his car, he finds that he and Felix can’t always walk side-by-side. Felix files behind him, and pushing against bigger groups of people, they get separated. Sylvain has to wait for Felix to find him and catch up. It'd be bad to lose Felix in the middle of downtown Faerghus, especially considering that Felix has no idea where Sylvain parked.

This probably leads to Felix grabbing Sylvain’s sleeve from behind as they walk, an effort to keep them from getting separated. It's a rational decision. It'll keep them connected, and people will probably notice that they're walking together and try not to step between them, but it still flusters Sylvain, who tries his best not to let the fact that his heart is pounding in his chest show.

They finally get back into Sylvain’s car. Felix lets out a small sigh as he slumps against the seat.

“Tired?” Sylvain asks with a small smile. “We hardly did anything.”

“We walked a bunch.”

“I thought you preferred walking to trying to find parking in Faerghus.”

“I take it back.” Felix scowls. “I’ve gotten out of shape since I stopped going to the gym. I’m tired.”

“You stopped going to the gym? Why?”

“No time.” Felix pauses and looks over at Sylvain. Sylvain frowns at him. “But I guess if I could make time to hang out with you, I could probably find time to go back to the gym.”

“I know cooking’s important to you, but you used to love going to the gym. You shouldn’t let one thing get in the way of another.”

“Cooking’s my job. It’s pretty important. And I remind you, again, that I genuinely enjoy cooking. It's not getting in the way of anything.” Felix pauses thoughtfully before giving a small shrug. “But I guess I do miss going to the gym. Maybe I’ll start again.”

Sylvain smiles a little. “Well, hey, maybe that’ll help you manage your stress.”

Felix huffs. “I told you I’m not stressed.”

“No, you said that you’re not stressed because of work. You’re still stressed out by _something_ —you just won’t tell me what it is.”

"Because it’s not important.”

“It _is_ important if it’s stressing you. Don’t downplay your issues like that.”

Regardless, Sylvain knows when to stop pushing an issue, and it seems that Felix isn’t going to open up about what’s been bothering him so he lets it go. “How tired are you?” he asks. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come and just chill in my apartment for a little longer, but if you’re tired, I can just take you straight home.”

Felix shakes his head. “I’m not that tired. You can take me to your apartment.”

-

When they arrive at Sylvain’s apartment, Sylvain gives him a quick tour of the place. He doesn’t miss how Felix’s eyes linger on the Garreg Mach Culinary School letterman jacket or the stickers and cups he has lying around. He feels a little bad, wondering how Felix felt after Sylvain left—but he’s sure that Felix had more important matters to tend to instead of moping over a friend, like getting his degree and mastering his art.

Sylvain leads Felix to the kitchen and tells him to take a seat.

"Today, Chef Sylvain is going to make you something good to eat.”

An amused smirk forms on Felix’s face. “Is that so?”

“I told you: you’re not going to cook today. It’s your day off so let me treat you.” Sylvain grins. “What are you in the mood for?”

Felix shakes his head. “Don’t let me stifle your culinary genius, Chef Sylvain,” he drawls sarcastically before elaborating, “Cook whatever you want.”

“Fine, but don’t complain if I make something you don’t like.” Sylvain heads towards the fridge and opens it up, looking around. His eyes settle on a package of meat on one of the shelves of his fridge, and he smiles a little. “I think I know what I’m going to make.”

 _Sautéed pheasant and eggs,_ Sylvain thinks with a hint of pride at such a good idea. He takes out a package of eggs and a package of pheasant meat from the fridge. _We ate it a lot as kids. Felix liked it as much as I did. I hope he still likes it._

As Sylvain cooks, Felix watches to the best of his ability from where he’s seated. But it seems that Felix can’t sit still. He gets up while Sylvain is neatly shredding some cabbage, and he stands beside him, looking down at the what Sylvain’s doing.

“God, you’re sloppy,” Felix remarks after watching Sylvain for not even thirty seconds. He points at where Sylvain’s holding the cabbage. “Watch your fingers. You’ll cut yourself doing that.” He waits a little more before sighing. “You’re hopeless, Sylvain. Give me the knife.” He holds his hand out expectantly.

Sylvain huffs. “I told you that I’m not letting you cook.” He finishes mincing the cabbage and sets it aside, placing some bell peppers on the cutting board. “And don’t coach me like that. I count that too.” He smirks. “Don’t you want to see what I’m capable of cooking?”

Felix opens his mouth to protest, but he clamps it shut with a roll of his eyes. He crosses his arms but doesn’t budge from where he stands.

“I’m not that sloppy,” Sylvain defends a little after the fact with a little pout forming on his face. “I still cook pretty regularly, you know. Just because I live alone doesn’t mean I have to live that typical bachelor life.” Sylvain finishes cuts the peppers and goes through a few other foods—onions, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli.

Felix freezes in place. Sylvain can feel Felix tense beside him without even looking at him. Sylvain frowns a little. “You live alone?” Felix asks.

“Well, yeah. I’m single, and I don’t really have a roommate or anything.” Sylvain tosses his gaze back at Felix and gives him a quick onceover. He finds Felix staring back. “Listen, my point is that I don’t exist entirely on ramen and takeout.” He hums as he takes out another small cutting board and a new knife for his pheasant meat. He knows better than to cross contaminate. “Ah, but you really can’t go wrong with good ramen and takeout.”

Felix’s eyes linger on the cutting board. He gives a small nod of approval, and Sylvain bites back a laugh at the solemn look on his face. It makes Sylvain happy that Felix is so in love with cooking, with his career and his hobby. Then Felix realizes what Sylvain said and wrinkles his nose. “No, that’s literally not true.”

Sylvain chuckles and sets out to work, cutting the pheasant meat. “Well, for people who don’t have your refined taste buds, you can’t.”

“Don’t act like a dunce. You went to a culinary school. You went to same school that I did,” Felix mutters. “You know how to cook. Your taste buds are just as ‘refined’ as mine.”

“That’s literally not true,” Sylvain parrots back at him, and Felix huffs, smacking his arm lightly. He just laughs cheerfully at how Felix seethes beside him. “I guess I do have some experience to my taste though.”

"Why else would you start a food blog?” Felix shakes his head.

“Hey, anyone can start a food blog.” Sylvain points out. He takes his cutting boards to the stove, where he places pans atop the stove and oils them, letting the fire flicker to life beneath them. Felix raises an eyebrow.

“So. What are you making?”

“Hmm, maybe I should keep it a secret.”

“I can see the ingredients. There’s hardly a point in keeping it a secret.”

“I don’t think you’d be able to guess what I’m making solely off the ingredients. There’s a lot of dishes that use similar components.” Sylvain starts to cook the meat and sets aside a pan to scramble some eggs.

When Sylvain finally adds spices to the meat and starts to sauté the meat with the vegetables he cut early, Felix hums appreciatively.

“I know this dish. I used to eat it a lot.” He waits a beat. “And you did too.”

Sylvain beams. “Yeah! I just thought this meal would throw us back to some good times. Plus, it’s really good so why not, right?” Sylvain takes out two plates, and Felix reaches over to start setting the table, unprompted. “Oh, you don’t have to—” 

“If you won’t let me cook, at least let me do this.”

Sylvain shrugs, but watching Felix set the table for the both of them—it makes something in Sylvain’s chest clench. It feels kind of domestic. And his house feels so much warmer and brighter and _happier_ now that there’s another person there; his table doesn’t look as lonely with just a place set for one.

Felix looks up at Sylvain. “What?”

"Nothing.” Sylvain sets their food on the plates and makes sure to make them look as nice as possible. He takes the plates to the table, where Felix is already seated.

“Guess I’m the one judging your cooking now.” Felix gives a small grunt. "Oh, how the tables have turned."

“Guess you are.” Sylvain smiles. “You can go ahead and start eating. I’m going to grab a drink. Do you want anything?”

“What do you have?”

"Not much, if I’m being honest.” Sylvain starts towards his fridge. “I was going to get myself a beer, but I also have some soda and water if you want either of those.”

“Get me a beer too.”

“Roger that.” Sylvain grabs two beers from the fridge, one in each hand, shutting the door with his leg. He heads back to the table, where Felix is bringing a slice of pheasant meat up to his lips. Sylvain sets the drinks down.

He’s strangely nervous. He thinks that it’s a pretty normal reaction, considering that he’s cooking for one of the world’s most famous chefs. He wants Felix’s approval. But he feels pretty antsy nonetheless.

Felix takes a few bites of the food.

“So?” Sylvain prompts a little eagerly. He stifles his excitement by starting on his own plate. “What do you think?”

Felix hums. “Not bad.”

Sylvain deflates a little. “Aw, thought I’d do a little better than ‘not bad’ at the very least.”

Felix shakes his head. “No, I don’t mean that dismissively, you blockhead. I mean that it’s pretty good.” Sylvain perks up a little. “But I would have held back on the salt a little. Oh, and do you have any hot sauce?”

“Yeah, hold on.” Sylvain retrieves the hot sauce, handing it over to Felix. He grins. He shouldn’t have taken Felix’s words at face value. He, of all people, should know how Felix tends to be. Relief and joy and pride still courses through his veins nonetheless. “So my cooking is pretty good, huh?” he asks slyly.

Felix clicks his tongue. “Don’t get full of yourself. I said it’s pretty good, but I meant that it’s pretty good for someone who dropped out of culinary school.”

Sylvain laughs. Nothing Felix says can really get to him now. He’s already heard what he’s needed to.

-

The rest of the night is relatively uneventful. They threw on a video game and drank as they played, but after a point, they get too drunk to properly play the game— _aw, c'mon, F_ _elix, you’re_ throwing _the match!_ Sylvain huffs, only for Felix to reply with a slurred _your char’cter_ literally _isn’t ev’n on screen anymore so who’s the one throwing?—_ so they throw on a fun show instead, drinking water to hopefully stave off the merciless hangover that awaits them in the morning.

Neither of them seem to be paying attention though. Sylvain is too busy staring at Felix. The light from the television screen lights up Felix’s face, colorful highlights in his hair and soft lights caught on the ends of his long lashes. His face is rosy from drinking; his eyes are half-lidded as his lips part in a small yawn, yet he refuses to go to bed, even when Sylvain insists that he’ll feel like shit in the morning. He looks comfortable, curled up on the couch with a blanket shared between him and Sylvain.

 _This could be us,_ Sylvain thinks dazed. He inches just a tad closer and settles in against the couch. Felix pushes a bit of the blanket towards him, probably thinking that Sylvain’s coming closer because he’s cold. He’s not cold. His face is hot; his hands are sweating. _If we were going out, if you loved me back, this could be us every night._

Felix turns to Sylvain and frowns when he finds him staring.

“What?” Felix mumbles.

“Nothing.” Sylvain turns his gaze back to the television.

They watch the TV in silence for a little longer before Felix turns towards Sylvain once again.

“Hey.”

"Hmm?”

“You said you’re single, right?”

“Yeah?”

“You mean it?”

Sylvain blinks. “Felix, where are you going with this?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Yeah. I’m single. I haven’t dated anyone since, like, college. Why?”

Felix grunts and looks back at the show playing.

“Felix?”

No reply.

Sylvain doesn’t give it much thought. Perhaps he’s just having a drunken thought inspired by what’s going on in the show they’re watching—two of the characters kissed. Perhaps he’s just curious—Sylvain hasn’t really cleared up much about his life, he thinks.

He should have given it more thought.

“I’m going to bed,” Felix says. He wobbles a little as he stands. He starts to head in the direction of the guest bedroom that Sylvain offered him, but before he goes, he pauses and lingers. Sylvain shuts off the television.

"Are you lost?” Sylvain asks with a small smile. “Here, it's this—”

For the second time that day, Felix does something that completely and utterly takes Sylvain off-guard.

Felix grabs a fistful of Sylvain’s collar and pulls him into a clumsy kiss.

The kiss can’t possibly last longer than a few seconds, but in those few seconds, Sylvain’s heart rate spikes and his knees go weak. He smells the dash of cologne Felix had on and the alcohol on his warm breath, practically tastes it; he savors the feeling of Felix’s lips, soft and plush, against his. Sylvain shuts his eyes and sways on his feet a little, leans into the kiss a little, pushing the thought that _it’s just because he’s drunk_ away just for a moment, pretending that it’s because Felix loves him back.

Felix lets him go abruptly and ambles towards the guest room without another word. The door falls shut behind him.

Sylvain stares. He lifts a hand to his lips and brushes the pads of his fingers against them. He can feel a phantom of Felix’s lips still there, lingering against his, warm and soft and everything Sylvain had ever dreamed of. He stares at the guest bedroom’s door in complete shock.

Maybe if he were sober, he would pursue Felix, ask him to explain what the hell that was, try to sort things out. Maybe if he were sober, he would realize that _Felix just fucking kissed him_ and that Felix had asked if he was seeing anyone just a few minutes earlier. Maybe if he were sober, he would connect the dots and realize that Felix was trying to tell him something, that Felix is trying to express himself in that roundabout way that he tends to when it comes to his true emotions, when it comes to anything that isn't just a curt criticism or opinion.

But he’s not sober. He’s far from it. He’s just as drunk as Felix is. He's swimming in good, warm feelings and nonsensical, hazy thoughts. He's hardly able to stand upright. To string together a coherent string of thoughts regarding what just happened would be like asking Sylvain to solve the world's hardest math equation.

So he yawns and shrugs a little, briefly flicking his gaze to the guest bedroom once again, and stumbles to his own bed, without another thought about it.

And when Sylvain finally wakes up from twelve hours of an alcohol-induced slumber, Felix is gone, nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for convenience, I'm giving Felix Tony Hawk's public presence. And by that, I mean that when he's out in public, without his chef clothes on, no one recognizes him as Felix Hugo Fraldarius, world renowned chef, and they just clock him as some random guy ~~who looks kind of mad a lot and vaguely gives off cat vibes~~ x)


	7. [gay panic]

“Felix, you have to _explain_ your thoughts and feelings before you just _kiss_ someone!”

“Quiet.” Felix grunts in response, his face pressed against the cool wood of his kitchen table. His head is pounding enough already. He doesn’t need Annette to be questioning his life choices at such a high decibel.

“No, don’t try to shut me up! Listen to me! If I just slapped you, you’d be confused, right?” Annette doesn’t bother waiting for an answer. “Well, if I said, ‘Felix, you’re a big dumb idiot and you forgot the _most important part_ of a confession,’ and _then_ slapped you, you’d get the idea, right?”

“I get it already,” Felix snaps. “I know. It was stupid and impulsive—I was drunk. But how was I supposed to know that we were going to get that drunk?”

Was inviting her over even a good idea? He knew on the way home that Annette was going to say _something_ about what he did.

…But he didn’t want to have his emotions suffocate him alive like they always do so he supposes that this isn’t the worst thing that could possibly happen.

Felix had left Sylvain’s apartment as soon as he had woken up. It had taken but a few seconds before he realized what he had done the night before. With shame and guilt and frustration swirling around in his veins, he left Sylvain’s apartment and caught a ride back to his own house, where he promptly called up Annette and Mercedes. They showed up to his house within minutes, just like they did the day before when he asked them what he was supposed to do at a “hangout” with just Sylvain.

He thinks he did a good job. He did what Annette advised him to—smile and laugh a lot and actually talk instead of just giving the monosyllabic responses that he’s used to—and he even went out of his way to look nice—well, Mercedes and Annette bickered with one another over his wardrobe for almost an hour before picking out an outfit. He probably left Sylvain feeling happy.

Maybe he had a chance with properly asking Sylvain out.

But then he went and ruined it by getting completely piss drunk and kissing Sylvain.

Felix feels a pang of pain ripple through his head, and he groans again. Annette sighs and nudges his glass of water closer to him.

“Felix, what are you on about? You didn’t _have_ to get drunk,” Annette argues. “You could have told him, ‘Gee, no thanks! I’m trying to stay sober,’ or something, and it would have been fine!”

“Annie,” Mercedes’s voice cuts through from the kitchen, her gentle tone now laced with a warning, “be nice. He’s had a pretty rough morning already so let’s take it easy on him, okay?”

“Like hell I will!” Annette huffs. “This was his chance! This was his chance to tell that loser, Sylvain, that he’s been pining over him for literal years!” Annette pauses briefly. “Er, no offense to Sylvain! He’s actually a really cool guy. I’m just upset.”

“If you’re upset, can you imagine how Felix feels?” Mercedes gently sets a plate of a some pancakes, a few sausages, and an omelet with vegetables with a side of some neatly cut fruits in front of Felix. She rubs his back gently and doesn’t react when Felix swats at her.

“Let her say what she wants,” Felix mutters. _What she’s saying, I’ve heard tenfold in my own head,_ Felix thinks glumly. _She can’t hurt me anymore than I’ve already hurt myself. I’ve already royally fucked myself over._

“She can say what she wants, but she can say it a little nicer.” Mercedes takes a seat at the table besides Annette. They share a look, and Annette’s expression eases.

“You’re right, Mercie. Sorry, Felix.” A sad look crosses both her and Mercedes’s faces.

It’s a painful duo of expressions that Felix feels he could have gone his whole life without seeing. His insides coil with pity and guilt.

“I don’t care what you have to say. Say what you want, how you want.” Felix shakes his head, though he immediately regrets it when colors start to blend and the world start to sway in his vision. He feels nauseous. He clutches his head with a wince. “That’s beside the point. What am I supposed to do about this?”

Annette and Mercedes share a look.

Mercedes pushes his plate towards him. “How about you eat a little? Chase away the hangover, and then we can discuss, okay?”

Felix picks up his fork and picks at his food. It smells delicious, and his stomach rumbles at the sight of the plate before him—Felix makes a mental note to thank Mercedes later—but he can’t focus on eating. His mind is drifting away towards a redhead with soft lips and soft, brown eyes. A friend with a laugh that can warm even the coldest heart and a smile that rivals the sun. A man he can never have.

Annette heaves a sigh for the hundredth time in this conversation, though this one seems less infused with frustration and more pitying. “Maybe you can just hope that he was too drunk to remember it,” she says softly, cupping her face in her hands with a tiny pout on her face.

Felix frowns. Strangely enough, even with all the hectic feelings in his chest, that’s one thing that he hopes doesn’t happen.

He knows that when he’d kissed Sylvain that night, even though he was drunk off his ass, he wanted to tell Sylvain that he loved him, that he loved him since they were in college, since they were children. It was a shot in the dark, one that Felix doesn’t think he’d be able to take again without being just as drunk. If Sylvain doesn’t remember the kiss, it’s better for their friendship, but…

If Sylvain doesn’t remember, Felix doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to muster up the courage to tell him the truth—about the kiss and about his feelings. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to try again.

“I’d rather he remember it.” Felix ignores Annette’s surprised face. “Even if he hates me for it.”

“Oh, Felix. Don’t be so down. I’m sure he won’t hate you,” Mercedes chimes in.

“You don’t know him. You _barely_ know him.”

“Yeah, and neither do you if you think he’ll hate you over something you did when you were drunk!” Annette huffs. Felix raises an eyebrow. “Listen, I know I haven’t known Sylvain for _nearly_ as long as you have, but he seems really nice and understanding! I tell him whenever you’re having a bad time, and he’s always eager to want to help you in whatever way he can, even if you’re being more of a sourpuss than usual!”

“Annette, how much do you like your job at The Lone Wolf?” Felix drawls, stabbing a sausage with his fork, and Annette rolls her eyes. They both know it’s an empty threat.

“I’m just saying. Sylvain doesn’t seem like the type of guy to throw a huge fit over this. He’s probably understand that you just kissed him because you were drunk and move on.”

“That’s the issue. It’s not because I was drunk. It’s because I…” Felix trails off, swiftly averting his gaze.

“He doesn’t have to know that!”

Felix sighs. “ _Annette_.”

The room settles down into a small silence. Felix eats his food, though he can hardly taste a thing with his emotions driving him nuts like this.

Finally, Mercedes speaks up. “There are lots of ways you can go about this situation, but you should weigh each option before doing anything. How about we go through some together before you do anything that might make you feel worse about this?”

“Fine.”

Mercedes hums. “Like Annette said, you can play it off as if you were drunk.”

“And like _I_ said—”

“Have you considered the consequences of doing this?” Mercedes cuts in.

It catches Felix off-guard. Mercedes hardly ever interrupts anyone when they speak. She’s simply that kind of person, polite and patient. If she interrupted him, she must think that what she has to say is quite important so Felix listens.

“No,” he answers honestly, sheepishly.

Mercedes turns to Annette.

“Well, if you just say you were drunk, I guess that something good that might happen is that Sylvain could just move on, y’know? He might just brush it aside.” Annette pauses. Sheepishness filters into her expression. “But… you might feel bad about lying to him about kissing him. And you’d be bottling up your feelings again.”

Felix doesn’t reply.

“You could always tell him what happened,” Mercedes offers, “but then you have to be ready to make up an excuse or just confess to him. And I’m sure you’ve weighed the consequences of lies and confessions in your head already.” She hums. “I suppose you could also just pretend it never happened, but that won’t work unless Sylvain doesn’t remember it.”

Felix sighs.

“It’s a difficult spot to be in,” Mercedes says, reaching across the table and gently taking his hands. She rubs her thumbs against his knuckles. Felix doesn’t pull away. She gives him a pitying look. “Perhaps you should wait for Sylvain to bring it up first?”

Annette brightens. “Yeah! If he brings it up, then it kind of cuts down your choices a little since it shows that he remembers it! So maybe you should just wait until he says something— _if_ he says something—and then decide from there.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll wait for him to bring it up. But say he does bring it up. Then, what do I do?” Felix asks.

Annette and Mercedes share a look.

“It’s your call, Felix,” Mercedes says.

“Lie,” Annette pipes up cheerfully at the same time.

They share another look briefly before they both end up giggling.

Felix sighs. Perhaps these two weren’t going to be as helpful as he thought they’d be.

-

Sylvain’s sick with worry.

He hasn’t heard from Felix since they hung out. To be fair, it’s only been a few days, and Sylvain’s sure that Felix is busy running his restaurant, but still, Sylvain’s sick with worry.

He can hardly concentrate on anything. His mind always makes him remember Felix’s lips against his, the flush against both their cheeks, the flutter of Felix’s lashes as his eyes fell shut for that brief second, the smell of his cologne, the taste of beer. It haunts him and teases him and makes him wish for more. His stupid, hopeless, love-addled brain had taken that short kiss, frozen it in time, and kept it as a memory to play on repeat over and over and over. He feels like he’s going crazy.

Sylvain’s debated texting Felix. He’s almost always the one to start the conversation so he’s pretty accustomed to sending the first text. Yet, whenever he sees the chatroom, his fingers freeze over the keyboard and his mind goes blank. He can never think of anything to say. He’s deleted countless conversation starters by now.

He wonders if Felix remembers that kiss; he wonders what Felix would think of it—if it was just one of those drunken spur-of-the-moment kind of things or if it was some kind of accident or if, by some godlike coincidence, Felix felt the same way. He’s so desperately wants to know.

But he doesn’t know what to say. So he waits.

Felix is the first one to send a text after they got drunk together over the weekend, almost a full four days after what Sylvain has now unimaginatively dubbed ‘The Incident.’

(Sylvain finds that calling it a kiss did way too much to his mind and his poor heart and calling it an accident hurts beyond reason. Calling it something like ‘The Incident’ felt neutral—and it was pretty funny the first time when he had jokingly referred to it as that. It just kind of stuck after a while.)

 _Are you free tomorrow?_ the text reads. _I have a dish you could try._

Sylvain stares at the message on his screen. His heart sinks a little when he reads it over and over again, only to find two short sentences, neither of which discuss The Incident nor the weekend hangout.

Sylvain clears his schedule anyway. Maybe Felix wants to talk about it in person.

 _Tomorrow at eight sound okay?_ he sends back.

-

Sylvain steadies his heart as he steps into The Lone Wolf.

 _Don’t say anything unnecessary,_ he tells himself. _Just play it cool. Forget about The Incident unless it’s mentioned._ He runs a hand through his hair. _It’s just Felix. We’re just going to talk a little and have me review his new dish. Nothing to be flustered or weird about. It’s just Felix._

His heart relentlessly beats harder anyway, almost like an act of rebellion. _Don’t you get it?_ his heart seems to be screaming at him. _It’s_ because _it’s Felix that you’re acting this way._

Sylvain ignores the flustered feeling in his chest and heads up to the podium, where Annette is taking a phone call and scribbling something down on a notebook. Upon closer inspection, it’s a list and names, times, and phone numbers—likely reservations—but Annette is doodling on the margins, drawing cats.

She spots him and brightens, though she holds up a finger and mouths, ‘Just a second.’ She finishes taking the reservation and smiles at Sylvain, putting the phone down.

“Hi! You’re here!”

Sylvain grins. “I sure am. How’ve you been, Annette?”

Annette starts to walk him to his table. “I’ve been doing just great! Ashe and Dedue made snacks for this surprise party we had for Bernadetta, and they let me keep some of the leftovers!” She pumps her fist. “Yes!”

Distantly, Sylvain notes that this is probably one of the first times that Annette hasn’t mentioned Felix or how he’s doing. What could that be about? “Surprise party? What’s the occasion?”

“She’s recently published her second book! It’s a sequel for her series.” Annette gives a small whoop. “I heard that it’s really good! You should definitely check it out.”

Sylvain blinks. “Wow, I didn’t know she was a writer.” He pauses. “She does strike me as a creative person though.” _It’s the introversion,_ he thinks off-handedly. “What’s it called?”

Just as Annette opens her mouth to say something, a hand clamps over her mouth.

“Annette, please! You can’t just go around telling people that!” Bernadetta frantically tells Annette, her face starting to redden. She pulls her hand away from Annette's mouth slowly, as if Annette is about to say more about her book. Annette blinks.

“Bernadetta? Weren’t you just over there?” Annette points to another part of the restaurant. Sylvain bites back a smile as Bernadetta stutters and stammers.

“No! Okay, well, yes, but I… I-I was just walking by, and I heard you mention my book, okay?” Bernadetta lets go of Annette and pointedly avoids looking at Sylvain. “But I’m telling you, you can’t just tell everyone you meet that.”

“But it’s just Sylvain! He’s a friend.” Annette smiles at Sylvain. Sylvain smiles back.

“S-still!”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a pretty avid reader myself.” Sylvain smiles at Bernadetta. “I think it’s great that you’re publishing your work.”

"Really?” Bernadetta’s tense posture eases a little, and she smiles a little. “I didn’t know. What do you like to read?”

Sylvain hums. “I read a ton of things, but recently, one of my favorite authors switched platforms and starting publishing books rather than fanfictions so I’ve been reading what she’s been putting out.”

“Fanfiction? I never took you as the type of person to read that!” Annette says incredulously. Sylvain shrugs.

“Hey, if it’s good, I’ll read it, you know?”

Bernadetta’s expression wavers. Her voice shakes a little. “Um, well, that’s really cool, I guess.”

“I really recommend her stuff,” Sylvain continues. “Her very first book—God, I’ve read it cover to cover about four times already—is called, like, _Phantom Pains and Coffee Stains_.”

“Hmm? Hey, Bernie, isn’t that the name of your first book?” Annette asks offhandedly as she seats Sylvain in his designated seat—it still makes Sylvain so happy and warm to think that Felix left him a special spot in the restaurant, just for him. Sylvain turns his gaze to Bernadetta as Annette’s words register in his head.

Bernadetta’s face is pale as a sheet. Sylvain’s eyes widen.

“No way.” Sylvain shoots out of his seat. “Bernadetta, _you’re_ —?!”

Bernadetta squeals out some kind of excuse, all in one quick string of speech, and flees to the kitchen with Annette hurrying after her, calling out, “Wait! Bernadetta! You used to write _fanfiction_?!”

A few patrons of the restaurant stare at them, speaking softly with one another about the sudden outburst, but the attention doesn’t linger too long on those two.

Sylvain stares at the kitchen. “Man,” he mutters to himself. “I didn’t even have a chance to get her autograph.” He sighs a little and takes out his phone to order Bernadetta’s book. _I’m like her biggest fan too,_ he thinks with a small frown. At least he knows that there’s a new book out. In retrospect, he probably missed the release date because he was too busy thinking about Felix.

Speaking of Felix, Sylvain had completely forgotten about him through all the craziness of what just happened. It was better that way. Sylvain had been feeling completely fine, but now that he’s alone again, thoughts of The Incident and the related anxiety and unease are starting to trickle back into his veins.

 _Okay, that’s enough of calling it The Incident,_ Sylvain thinks. _I’m a full-grown man. I don’t need to use code words to refer to something. It’s just a drunken kiss. From Felix._

Sylvain sighs, his head in his hands. He’s hopeless.

-

The night goes by pretty normally. Sylvain and Felix talk as Sylvain tries Felix’s food, which is as perfect as always. Even with Sylvain’s body wracked with unease and fear, he manages to keep his cool while they chat. As he promised himself, he doesn’t mention their kiss because Felix doesn’t mention it.

 _He probably forgot about it,_ Sylvain reasons. _I mean, he was pretty drunk so it makes sense. Plus, it’s better this way. I can pretend it never happened and save us both the embarrassment and awkwardness._

This line of thinking doesn’t do much to stave off the fact that Sylvain’s going to have to live with this pent-up, unrequited love and a half-assed, drunken, nonconsequential kiss for the rest of his life. It’s his burden to bear now. He knows it happened, and Felix doesn’t. He knows that they’ve kissed, and he knows that he’s deeply in love with Felix. It’s going to hang over him and taunt him.

But it doesn’t matter since they’re still friends, right? Sylvain can still talk to Felix in the way that he does normally, and he can still make those fun jabs at Felix’s cooking without Felix getting genuinely offended by his jokes. And Felix even still lets Sylvain stay at the restaurant afterhours to hang around with the staff and help out if he wants.

It doesn’t change the fact that Sylvain still wants Felix the same way he always has. Sylvain still dreams of Felix, of his lips, of his smiles and laughter and _warmth._

-

With that kiss behind them, things slowly start to trickle back into normalcy.

Felix’s texts come more often, whether they’re about trying food at the restaurant or just a picture that he thought Sylvain would enjoy. Sylvain resumes his trips to the restaurant, chats up the staff, chats up Felix.

And, of course, he still tries out Felix’s food, giving him the criticisms Felix wants to hear—and sometimes slipping up and saying something a little dangerously close to how Sylvain truly feels.

But he’ll always hold back and play it off just enough.

(The kiss always lingers in the back of Sylvain’s head, a faint presence against his lips and against his heart. Sylvain always, always ignores it when he’s with Felix. As much as he can.

Their friendship relies on it, after all, and Sylvain will do everything in his power to keep Felix around him, even if he can never be with him the way he wants.)

Felix lets him stay at the restaurant later and longer. Then he lets him stay before opening and after closing. Sylvain likes to help out around the place, maybe wiping down tables or straightening out menus in the pile or hopping into the back to help Ashe fold the napkins around the silverware in that fancy way that expensive restaurants do.

Felix enjoys Sylvain’s presence around, he thinks. After all, Felix likes to chat with him as he works.

Well, he’s not technically working there. He helps out the staff with little things.

At first, Felix had insisted that Sylvain didn’t need to do anything, that they could just sit at one of the tables and just talk.

“I’m not paying you,” he had deadpanned, and Sylvain just laughed.

“Felix, you know me better than that! I don’t need you to pay me. It just bothers me that it’s messy here, you know,” Sylvain cheerily answered, biting back his actual reasoning for wanting to stay. Words he wants to say build up in his chest until he feels like he can’t breathe—but he’s a master of keeping his truest feelings to himself, so he doesn’t spill.

 _Because just being around you, just being here with you, is enough_.

So gradually, Sylvain starts to help out more and more at the restaurant. He’ll wipe down tables; he’ll bring back dirty plates and wash them if no one’s available; and on the rare occasion that Felix lets him, he’ll go around the restaurant during work house and help refill drinks or chat with some of the customers from time to time. But really, what he finds himself wanting to do is be in the kitchen.

“No.” Felix crosses his arms. “You stay out of the kitchen. If you come in, I’d have to follow you around and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.”

“Is following me around so bad?” Sylvain grins. "People usually like to be around me, if what I'm told is correct."

That's what girls in college told him. It's probably not true.

"I have better things to be doing. You are not a priority.”

"Ouch! So cold, Fe!”

But even with Felix’s harsh words, he doesn’t protest whenever Sylvain sneaks into the kitchen. Just as long as he’s washed his hands before touching anything and stays out of the ways of the other chefs and the waiters and waitresses bustling in and out of the doors.

Felix follows him around as he said he would, though there seems not to be any true annoyance in his expression. He simply supervises Sylvain, answering his happy chatter with a reply once in a while and explaining how the restaurant works.

He occasionally stops by to correct someone on their cooking with a displeased click of his tongue or give comments on how to do the next dish. Sylvain always waits for him to finish, to come and join him again, before wandering off to his next wherever. 

Sylvain can wait forever if it's for Felix.

It’s pleasant. Even with the clatter of plates and the sizzling from pans and the beeping from microwaves, the water running and the doors shutting and opening and yelled orders over the sound of it all, it’s a cozy atmosphere. Familiar almost. There’s a nice blend of smells. There’s humming and friendly banter. There’s in-jokes that the staff are more than happy to get Sylvain in on. There’s pranks pulled on fellow chefs and staff.

It’s just a such nice atmosphere. It’s like a warm, happy family.

Sylvain can easily imagine himself fitting in near seamlessly here, laughing amongst Dedue and Ashe, chatting with Mercedes and sneaking some of the fruits she’s working with into his mouth when she isn’t looking; he can envision himself taking orders from Bernadetta and gushing over her writing when he can. He can imagine himself listening to Annette humming while she works and pulling pranks on Felix with the other workers before work starts and making jokes and listening to Felix criticize his cooking and—

God, what a thought. Finally putting his passion for food to work instead of succumbing to his family’s expectations of him. Making close friends instead of holing himself up in his lonely apartment. Spending time with Felix.

But it’s kind of unrealistic. Just like everything that makes Sylvain happy—cutting ties with his overbearing family. Working at the Lone Wolf. Being with Felix. Unrealistic, leaving Sylvain wistfully wishing and pining.

It won’t stop him from imagining himself here, especially after Felix thrusts a uniform into his hands one day.

“If you’re going to walk around, you should at least look like you work here,” Felix had muttered with a small sigh. “Customers are going to think some random person is sneaking into the back. I don’t need rumors. Or other idiots trying to break in.”

Sylvain unfolds the uniform with a smile. His smile only grows wider when he sees his name is neatly sewn onto it with the fancy font that all the other uniforms do.

“For me? I love it!” Sylvain laughs. “I’m surprised you didn’t need me to try this on beforehand. You think it’ll fit?”

“It should, but if it doesn't, Mercedes can tailor it to fit you. She's good at that kind of thing.” Felix crosses his arms. “Go change into it.”

Sylvain brightens and heads into the locker room, peeking in. No one’s there—because everyone is already diligently preparing for their hectic Saturday when all the customers file in, of course. Sylvain changes into the uniform, shaking his head in exasperation at all the buttons, but when he’s done, he truly admires the way it looks on him. He even gets a fun little hat. It’s a little tight in some places, but that’s probably on him for tying the apron too tight.

Sylvain hurries back to Felix and beams, putting his hands on his hips and puffing out his chest proudly. He feels like a little kid, showing off his new costume, but he can’t help but to feel strangely giddy about all of this.

“Perfect fit! I love it, Fe. Thanks.”

Felix stares at him. Sylvain wonders what he’s thinking. He’s been quiet for a little too long. There’s not much emotion in his face—but when is there ever?—yet his eyes are alight with some kind of feeling, one makes Sylvain’s heart pound a little in his chest.

“Felix?” Sylvain prompts quietly.

Felix’s lips quirk up in the smallest smile. A smile so small that if any ordinary person saw it, they wouldn’t notice it. A smile so warm, Sylvain’s face heats up in response. A smile so, so _charming_ that Sylvain’s brain just about short-circuits when he sees it.

“Good. It fits you,” Felix says plainly, probably completely unaware of what he just did to Sylvain’s heart. “Glad you like it.”

-

They hang out more, even outside the restaurant.

Sylvain invites Felix over, and Felix comes over from time to time. 

But Sylvain gets more excited when Felix invites Sylvain to come over to his house on his off days. Sylvain takes that offer without even thinking twice.

His house is pretty bare, as Sylvain expected, but his kitchen is brimming with food and tools and things that Sylvain would never expect to see in a regular household kitchen. He's even got a few pictures and awards hanging from the wall. And even that pair of swords that got passed down through his family, from his great-great-great grandfather or someone like that, is hanging up on the wall.

Sylvain teases him a bit about his house; Felix throws it right back, joking about Sylvain's apartment in that deadpan way that only Felix can ever really pull off.

They don’t ever do much other than talk, watch a show together, eat together, or play a video game together, but it’s still fun.

Whichever home they're at—though Sylvain does get an earful about getting more groceries and better food and utensils when it's his apartment they're at—Felix likes to be the one to cook, even though Sylvain insists he doesn’t have to.

“You cook all the time already. Hell, you already cook for _me_ all the time,” Sylvain protests as Felix scampers back-and-forth from the fridge to the pantry to the utensil drawer to his spice rack. “You should let me cook for you.”

“I like cooking,” Felix states flatly. “And I want to cook something good for you.” He waits a beat. “For us. I haven’t eaten yet either.”

Sylvain sighs, though a smile teases his lips. “Fine, but I won’t make it easy for you so you won't do this again.”

“Since when have you _ever_ make anything easy for me?” Felix mutters his breath.

So as Felix cooks, Sylvain stands beside him the same way that a loyal dog sits beside its owner. He hums and taps on the counter, drawing an irritated look from Felix. He plays some music from his phone. He wets his hands at the sink and flicks water droplets at Felix, who rolls his eyes and flicks water right back. He dicks around the kitchen, snatching up Felix’s whisk or his spatula. Felix huffs at him and chases him around to get it back as Sylvain laughs and holds it up above his head.

As Felix grabs his arm and forces it down, wrenching a spatula from Sylvain’s hand, Sylvain can’t help but to realize how _close_ Felix is to him. He can just about smell the shampoo in Felix’s hair, the faintest smell of his soap. His heart stutters in his chest, and his eyes widen a little.

 _This feels domestic,_ Sylvain thinks, just as he did when he cooked for Felix before. A pang of sadness pulses through him when he realizes that this is probably as close to a romantic relationship he’s ever going to get from Felix. _This feels so soft. And I can never have this._

It puts a damper on his Sylvain’s mood for the rest of the night. Felix couldn’t pry the reason why from Sylvain’s mouth no matter how hard he tried.

-

One night, while Sylvain’s staying over at Felix’s house pretty late into the night, Felix asks him a question.

They’re sitting on the couch watching some show together, a large blanket tossed across both of their laps. A bowl of popcorn, with a few of the popcorn kernels scattered on the floor and the blanket, sits precariously atop the blankets and couch cushions. And their drinks—a nice cold beer for Sylvain and a soda for Felix—sit on the coffee table in front of them.

“Hey. Sylvain.”

Sylvain almost doesn’t hear Felix’s voice over the raucous noise of the show. Sylvain turns his gaze to face Felix, who is staring straight ahead at the movie rather than looking at him.

“You left Garreg Mach.”

They both know this. It’s like telling someone what their birthday is.

"Yeah. What about it?”

Felix flicks his eyes over to Sylvain briefly. “Why?”

Sylvain sits up a little. He hadn’t expected Felix to ask that. “Well, what was I supposed to do at a culinary school?” he asks with a small smile. “Kleiman had a pretty good business and accounting program, which would probably be more helpful for my family’s company, so I transferred over.”

It’s not the whole truth, but Sylvain doesn’t think that he’d be able to tell Felix about the fact that his love for Felix would destroy their friendship and maybe their lives. He didn’t want to distract Felix from his studies, from his skills, from his practice. He didn’t want to break apart their friendship. But staying was overwhelming for Sylvain, and it was only a matter of time before his father decided that culinary school was a ‘waste of money.’

Felix sighs. “But you don’t care about that business. Why bother?”

Sylvain shrugs. “I mean, the business didn’t end up working that great, yeah, but it’d be a good way to earn my father’s favor, y’know? Get on his good side so he doesn’t take me off his will.”

Sylvain can’t possibly care any less about his inheritance.

“You like cooking.” Felix turns to face him, jostling the popcorn bowl a little. Sylvain’s shocked by the look in his eyes—a hard and angry look. “You liked it at Garreg Mach. You liked the courses and cooking and studying food. So why?”

“I told you,” he repeats a little quieter. “For my family’s company.”

Felix’s expression shuts down a little. “Well, that was stupid.”

“I know.”

Felix shuts his eyes. “I…”

Sylvain cocks his head.

"I missed having you around,” Felix says, his voice just barely audible. He averts his gaze. “Garreg Mach wasn’t fun without you there.”

Sylvain’s definitely shocked to see this side of Felix. He hadn’t seen Felix look so vulnerable since—well, maybe since Glenn died. He wonders if everything was okay for Felix at Garreg Mach. If he’s okay now.

“I was thinking of transferring out of Garreg Mach too,” Felix continues, as if he isn’t completely blowing Sylvain’s mind right now. “I wanted to go wherever you were going, but you didn’t tell me where you were going. Just that you were transferring.”

“What? Why would you transfer out of one of the greatest culinary schools? I thought you liked cooking,” Sylvain says weakly. “That’s what you say to me all the time.”

"I do. I love it. But…” Whatever Felix was about to say dies on his tongue. His expression grows cloudy again.

Sylvain does his best to shake away his shock and worry by wearing a bright smile instead. “Well. Just forget that I ever left Garreg Mach, then. I’m here now, Felix, so I’ll make things fun again, okay? And I won’t just leave you hanging again. Promise.”

Felix grunts noncommittally.

And just like that, they’re back to watching the show, though Sylvain has his suspicions that neither of them are thinking about whatever’s on the screen.

“So, um, are you okay?” Sylvain prompts.

“I'm fine."

"You sure? I don’t mind hearing what’s bothering you. You know that, Felix.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Another silence falls over them.

Maybe it’s just his nerves that Felix isn’t okay, that there’s this strange silence between them. Maybe it’s the beer he’s been drinking throughout the night. Or maybe it’s just pure idiocy, the kind that Felix says that only Sylvain can manage to have. Whatever it is, it makes Sylvain say something completely stupid.

“Can I ask you something weird?”

Felix shrugs. “Shoot.”

His mouth is moving before he can think twice about what’s coming out of it.

"Do you happen to remember when we kissed?”

It's too late to take it back. He said it, and Felix definitely heard what he said. 

Felix freezes and whips around to stare at Sylvain with wide eyes.

Oh, Sylvain’s really in it now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back to updating my fics baybee!!


	8. wow, i can't believe sylvix invented love !!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~ok i think i've left everyone waiting for a bit too long on that last cliffhanger aha~~
> 
> aaaaand it's done! i really wish i paced this fic a little better and stuck a lil more to my 'sylvain as a food critic' idea, but i was just so impatient! just wanna see my boys kiss! and be sad then happy!
> 
> thank you so much for joining me on this lil fic, and thank you so much for the support! it's been so astounding!! mind-blowing!! *british accent* absolutely bonkers!!!
> 
> hope you enjoy this last chapter of my silly lil cooking sylvix fic!

“Do you happen to remember when we kissed?”

Felix freezes. Sylvain’s really in it now.

Immediately, Sylvain fumbles over his words in a clumsy attempt to remedy the situation, but the damage has been done. He can already feel his perfect friendship with Felix deteriorating into dust, just remnants of his happiness drifting away on the wind. 

“Er, I think that happened? I think? I-I mean, maybe that was a dream—no, not that I dream of us kissing or anything! That’d be pretty damn weird considering we're just friends, y’know? What I meant was that, um, I…” He sighs, defeated.

Maybe it'd be better for him just to shut up.

Felix grabs the remote and turns off the TV before turning to Sylvain. The silence of the room is heavy now, squeezing Sylvain's quickly beating heart. Sylvain swallows as his gaze darts around the room, trying desperately not to look at Felix. He can't bear to see the disgust that's probably waiting on Felix's face. It would break Sylvain's heart for years to come.

“You remember that?” Felix asks slowly, his voice low.

Sylvain winces a little at the tone of his voice. Is he angry? There's something strange in his voice that Sylvain, for what seems like the first time in literal years, can't for the life of him entirely decipher. “Yeah. I do,” Sylvain responds without thinking. “Sorry, I just—I shouldn't have brought it up and..."

Then Sylvain’s brain starts working, and it hits him.

Sylvain dares to lift his gaze to stare at Felix, his eyes wide. “Wait. Wait, wait, _wait._ Hold on. Hold _on._ You... _you_ remember that?” he squawks. “You were, like, blackout drunk! I swear that you… I thought that you…” 

Words die on Sylvain's tongue, leaving him dumbstruck. 

Much to Sylvain's surprise, Felix's reaction doesn't seem to be remotely near immediate disgust or rage or anything like that. It's a simple click of his tongue as he turns his gaze to the side. Felix is acting like he's facing a minor inconvenience, rather than the massive catastrophe that Sylvain's brain is starting to brew everything into.

“Yeah. I remember it. And I wasn’t _that_ drunk.” Felix sighs, shaking his head and turning his head back so that he can face Sylvain. His expression is neutral, if not a little pink. 

It's probably from the beer we're drinking, Sylvain reasons and moves on.

(Somewhere in the hazier parts of Sylvain's sober mind, he ponders, _Beer? I could have sworn_ he _was drinking something else..._

But in a flash, the confusing thought is gone and has succumbed to the warm fuzziness of the alcohol as Sylvain's mind drifts away, back towards Felix.)

Felix sighs again. “Why didn’t you bring this up earlier? Why’d you wait for so long?”

Sylvain rubs the back of his neck. “Well, I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it.” 

"What, and I would now?"

Sylvain laughs. It surprises him from how suddenly it comes on, but he supposes he's just nervous. "Well, in my defense, I'm a bit tipsy, so I'm not thinking straight," Sylvain replies.

 _Damn right I'm not thinking straight,_ Sylvain muses with a small smile to himself. _I'm thinking of you._

Felix scoffs. "Sure. Whatever."

Nevertheless, Felix's nonchalance about the situation has brought Sylvain's anxiety down to a more reasonable level, though it does leave his chest a cocktail of all sorts of emotions—notably, a confusing tangle of hope and fear and amusement. 

"So? What about it? Why'd you bring it up?"

His first instinct, as it often is, is to simply play it off. He already terrified himself out of his wits earlier when he let his knowledge of that kiss slip out of his clumsy mouth. He should really try to move on from it to relieve both himself and Felix of any further awkwardness, right?

Yet, a little spark of guilt prods at his chest. Felix had been rather honest about how he felt after Sylvain left Garreg Mach. He hadn’t elaborated too much, though Sylvain hadn’t particularly expected him to, but it was just enough to see that Felix had been hesitant about sharing, had been truly hurting over how Sylvain had seemingly left him without any mention of why or where he’s going.

Felix was being honest. Shouldn’t Sylvain be honest about why he’s asking? About his feelings?

Because if Sylvain’s being honest, he wants to ask Felix about that kiss so much it’s driving the sleep from his eyes, pulling his appetite from his stomach, corrupting the thoughts from within his brain. _Was it an accident?_ Sylvain wonders. _Or was it intentional, maybe? Some kind of prank? A joke, right? You’re just making fun of me, right? For being naïve or something?_

_Or… Do you love me back?_

The mere thought that maybe Felix returns his feelings is so laughable, so improbable. It's almost impossible. No, to Sylvain, it _is_ impossible. Felix would never return his feelings. Yet, the thought of Felix maybe taking his feelings, his heart, in his warm and gentle hands with a smile and caressing it lovingly is just so enticing and addicting. The thought is almost enough to pry Sylvain’s true feelings from his lips, to rip his heart out of his chest and present it to Felix on a nice, little platter for him to do as he wishes with it. 

It’s enough to drop the dopey smile from Sylvain’s lips, to put the serious look in his eyes, to get his heart pumping harder and faster as he prepares to say— 

Sylvain immediately shakes the strange mood off and reasons with himself. _No, no, no,_ he tells himself. _What are you thinking, you idiot? You can’t just say these things! That’s so stupid! Dangerous! Risking your whole entire friendship with Felix, right after you got him back in your life? Right after he admitted how much he’s missed having you around? You can’t just destroy this friendship with him like that, you selfish bastard!_

“Sylvain.” Felix nudges him gently with his leg. “Hey. Are you going to answer or not?”

“I just… wanted to see if you remembered it,” Sylvain claims lamely, stiltedly. It’s the best he can come up with, right in the middle of telling truth and weaseling himself out of this conversation. _I want to see if you remember it,_ Sylvain thinks, _because I want to know how much of it was serious._ _Because I want to know if you like me the same way I like you._

But he can’t bring himself to say that. He can’t bring himself to be so brave, to watch Felix’s expression contort into one of pure hatred and betrayal and disgust. He’ll play it safe, wearing that same, stupid smile he always does.

Felix stares at him. “Uh-huh,” he replies flatly, clearly unconvinced.

“Honest!” Sylvain forces a laugh. The first laugh is always the hardest to pull off and make believable, but after you get the swing of it, the laughs come along naturally and sound relatively fine. “You know, it’s been such a long time that I forgot how you got when you were wasted like that.” Sylvain laughs again. “You should have seen yourself! Wobbling around like a newborn fawn learning to walk.”

Felix’s expression doesn’t change. “And? That’s it? You just wanted to ask if I remembered? So you could tease me?”

“Hey, what’s the point in remembering the past if you aren’t going to have a little fun, right?” Sylvain throws an arm around Felix’s shoulders and beams at him.

It’s a stupid move, all done in the name of trying to show some semblance of their normal friendship. All it seems to really do is reignite that painful crush in Sylvain’s chest. Burn him right up from the inside out. Especially when Felix looks over at him.

Felix’s house is dark, save for a plain standing floor lamp in the corner of the room and the shy sliver of silver moonlight that slips in through the blinds—yet the light is just enough to see Felix with the television turned off. The moonlight silhouettes him, a backlight; the lamp makes him pop out, a highlight. Seeing the way that the little strands of Felix’s messy bun and the threads of his comfortably oversized hoodie are painted in such a sweet, serene white and the way that his cheeks and eyes and lashes are coated in a vibrant gold just about stop Sylvain’s heart right in his chest, his breath hitching and getting caught in his throat.

Felix is a colorful, bright flame, a gold and silver star sparkling despite the darkness of the house. He is the star of Sylvain’s heart, of his life, lighting up the darker parts and leaving him warm. Always with him, even if it’s from a distance. Even if Sylvain hadn’t seen him in the brighter and happier times. A brilliant, glittering, and glowing star that Sylvain doesn’t think he’d be able to live without.

Without Felix back in his life, Sylvain felt a bit like his own apartment. Dark, lonely, incomplete. There was always just another space left behind, a space that had been carelessly used by countless people who were all looking just to have a good time or to try and get a crack at some of that Gautier wealth before Sylvain revealed he isn’t particularly on good terms with his family. A space that Felix fills perfectly, bringing all sorts of light and warmth and joy along with him.

And here he is now, a close and most deeply cherished friend, a mere handful of inches away from him, their sides pressed together.

Felix—a flame, a star, the light of Sylvain’s life.

Felix flicks his gaze up at Sylvain’s for a brief moment. His sweet, brown-eyed gaze, as skeptical as it is, is searching for something in Sylvain’s eyes, but Sylvain knows Felix won’t find what he’s looking for. Sylvain’s gotten too good at hiding himself. At least he hopes he has.

Felix’s gaze doesn’t move for even a split second from Sylvain’s. Sylvain loses himself more and more to Felix’s gaze, his face heating up the slightest bit as he smiles at Felix.

 _Oh, if only he knew,_ Sylvain laments. _If only he knew how much he means to me._

To imagine those eyes filled with a burning hatred—the kind of hatred that his brother had repeatedly shown Sylvain, later with his parents following suit—would destroy Sylvain entirely. He would never be able to recover from that, even if he moved away again. Even if Dimitri tried to put him together again by talking with him and getting him another therapist.

He would be nothing. He would be in ruins.

 _I can’t lose him_ , Sylvain thinks, much to the dismay of his pitiful heart that begs Sylvain to lean in just a _little_ closer and merge their lips together. _I can’t, not when he means so much to me._

It’s then that Sylvain truly understands and accepts that he can only let himself be Felix’s best friend. Even if it _hurts_ and _hurts_ and _hurts_ to simply stand by and be just a friend. Even if it’ll actually kill Sylvain to see Felix in a relationship with someone else.

_But they’ll be a better match for Felix, won’t they?_

_Of course they will. Who can love me? I’m just a “pretty” mess that gets thrown around from person to person._

“You’re thinking of something stupid again, aren’t you?” Felix huffs, breaking the silence between the two of them.

Sylvain smiles, trying to keep the bitter, sullen edge out of his expression. “Guess I am.”

Sylvain lets go of Felix, despite the almost magnetic pull back to Felix that his feelings have on him. Sylvain already misses how warm Felix was pulled up against the side of his chest, misses how the soft flyaways of Felix’s hair gently tickled Sylvain’s arm.

 _Would it be okay to hug him again?_ a greedy part of Sylvain wonders. _Just a little longer this time? Or would that be too much of me?_

“Well, what were you thinking about?”

“Nothing much.” Sylvain lets out a soft sigh through his nostrils. Great, him getting a little lost in his thoughts left Felix concerned. Sylvain obviously can’t tell Felix what’s actually on his mind, but he can’t particularly think of a believable lie right now. Maybe he should just head home to continue moping, so he isn’t in Felix’s presence and worrying him.

Sylvain stretches his arms up above his head as he stands. “Well. I better head back home. I think I had a bit too much to drink.” He slurs his words a little and wobbles a bit, hoping to fool Felix.

But there’s no fooling Felix. Not after they both got piss-drunk together. Felix probably knows what Sylvain really is like when he’s drunk.

“Shut up. You’ve barely had anything to drink.” A pause as they both glance over at the lonely, empty beer can sitting on the coffee table and then lock eyes again. Felix narrows his eyes. “And do you really think I’d let you drive home if you were that drunk?” Felix reaches out and grabs Sylvain’s sleeve. “Stay.”

Sylvain blinks but complies, sitting on the couch beside him again.

“You’re hiding something from me. Spill.”

Okay, so maybe Sylvain was a little _too_ lost in his thoughts there. Sylvain rubs the back of his neck. “Am I? Because I don’t think I’m hiding anything.” Sylvain reaches for the remote to turn the television back on. “Here, let’s just go back to watching that show you like.”

Felix grabs his arm and snatches the remote out of it.

Sylvain smiles. Maybe he’s feeling playful? Sylvain reaches for the remote, knowing damn well that his reach would get him that remote back, but Felix, with a deadpan expression, gently swats his hand away and tosses the remote to the empty armchair beside them.

“I’m serious. Tell me. What are you thinking?” It’s phrased like a demand, a statement, rather than a question.

Sylvain doesn’t like where this conversation is headed already.

Sylvain scoffs a little. “Well, now I’m thinking about how you’re just throwing your things around.” Sylvain stands up. “Come on, treat your things with some respect, won’t you?” He heads to the other armchair to pick up the remote again. “Now can we get back to having a good time? Watching shows and stuff? This is kind of killing my whole weekend mood.”

Maybe Sylvain’s delivery of that last part came out less playful than he’d wanted it to because when he looks over at Felix, wearing a small smile, Felix’s expression shifts, from serious and stubborn to something inscrutable. It looks… sad, almost.

Immediately, Sylvain’s own smile falls as he’s filled with guilt. He’s tempted to apologize, to just tell Felix the truth already so that Felix won’t wear such a melancholic expression.

 _Sorry I didn’t tell you. But you can trust me,_ Sylvain wants to say. _I’m your friend, right? I’ll tell you! I love you! So much that it’s driving me nuts! I’m sorry! Smile for me again? Please?_

But Sylvain refuses to fuck things up even more than he’s fucking them up now and just grabs the remote and returns to his seat at the couch beside Felix.

A truly awkward silence spreads in the room until it’s suffocating. Sylvain plays with the remote while Felix stares ahead at the dark, empty screen of his television.

“Well?” Felix says flatly, though not unkindly. “You wanted to watch TV. So go on then. Turn it on.”

Sylvain puts the remote down and sighs. “Sorry. I… That sounded mean. I don’t actually want to watch anything.” Sylvain cringes a little at himself. What is he doing? He’s just putting Felix in a bad mood all because he can’t parse his feelings, right? Because he’s scared of fucking things up again? As he always does? Sylvain wills away his insecurities and the claws they’re digging into his rationality.

“What I meant was that I’d rather not talk about it, y’know? It’s not that I don’t trust you or want to talk about it with you. It’s just… me being stupid.”

Felix doesn’t speak for a bit, though his gaze travels all over Sylvain’s expression. Then, he lets out what sounds like a long-suffering sigh. “God, you _are_ stupid.”

Sylvain blinks. “Huh...?”

Felix looks up at him. There’s a strange intensity to his gaze, one that Sylvain can’t quite understand. What he says is just as puzzling, if not more. “Back in college—no, back in even _grade school_ —you were so popular for smooth-talking all those girls and even talking back to the teachers, but here you are, dense as a black hole.”

Sylvain frowns. Is his biggest fear coming true? Is Felix about to tell him that he hates him? That he’s always hated him? “Felix,” Sylvain says weakly, “where is all this coming from?”

Felix averts his gaze. “I can’t make it any clearer, can I?” Felix shuts his eyes. “I told you. I remembered that stupid kiss. I was sober enough to remember it.” A brief pause. “So put it together,” he mutters, his voice a little quieter than before.

Sylvain humors Felix and thinks back to that day that they kissed.

Sylvain had been pretty drunk himself, though not drunk enough to forget what happened. Felix had apparently been some level of sober and remembered that they kissed.

…So what?

Sure, Sylvain can speculate all he wants about Felix’s intentions with that kiss, but what’s the point? It was just a drunken mistake that Felix had made, and it was a drunken mistake, this time on Sylvain’s part, that brought this topic up between them again. What does Felix want him to make of this?

Is Felix trying to say that…?

Sylvain shuts down wherever that train of thought was headed. _No, don’t be stupid. He’s probably going to say something else. Maybe he’s going to say I kissed him?_ A pause. _Oh God, am I remembering things wrong? Did I start that kiss? If I did… Did I upset him about it? I probably did, right? It probably made him feel awful…_

Sylvain furrows his brows. “Are you mad at me because I kissed you?” is all he can manage to get out.

“What?” Felix frowns.

“Am I wrong?” Sylvain bites his lower lip nervously. “I’m not following. Can’t you just tell me so I can apologize or something?”

Felix huffs out a frustrated sigh. “Sylvain, I’m telling you that I kissed you on purpose,” he says slowly.

Sylvain stares. _Felix… kissed me on purpose? Does that mean…?_

And before either Felix or Sylvain can say another word, Sylvain burst out into laughter. Laughter that is somewhere between relieved and nervous. It surprises him because he isn’t expecting to laugh, but the laughs bubble out of his chest almost uncontrollably. It seems to take Felix off-guard too, replacing that stern look with a surprised one.

He can’t help but to notice the sad and self-deprecating edge to his own laughter, to his voice. “Well, yeah, of course you did. It wasn’t like you just bumped into me, you know! If I recall correctly, you pulled me into that kiss. There was _some_ purpose to it, right?”

Felix blinks, as if processing what Sylvain said. Then the crease between his eyebrows grows sharper, deeper, as he frowns. “No, you moron. That’s exactly why… You don’t get it, do you?”

“I don’t.”

Felix sighs. “I’m saying I kissed you on purpose. Because I like you.”

Time comes to a stop as those words reach Sylvain’s brain. Sylvain can’t believe what he’s hearing. Is he dreaming? Is this some kind of elaborate joke? Does Felix want something from Sylvain? His head buzzes with questions upon questions upon questions, a deafening jumble of noise.

Before him, Felix stands, wearing a tense grimace. How long as Sylvain been standing there? How long as Felix been watching him like that?

“Say something, Sylvain. Stop staring at me like that, and just say something.” Felix waits a beat before adding, softer, “Please.”

“You what?” Sylvain asks quietly.

“I said I like you. A lot actually.” Felix sighs. “You don’t have to return my feelings. I... I would rather have you be honest with me. I don’t want your pity. So tell me if you don't like me back.”

Sylvain swallow hard, his heartbeat jackrabbiting in his chest. It’s getting hard to breathe from how much his heart is beating, but Sylvain can’t help it. How can he keep calm when something from his wildest dream, the one thing he wants and has wanted more than anything in the world, is happening in front of him?

God, he feels so disconnected from what’s happening, almost like he’s fading away, like he’s dreaming, like he’s about to wake up in his bed with frustration seeping through his body and into the thin sheets he has spread about his bed, the sheets he would crumple in his fists as he mourns the loss of such a beautiful, perfect dream.

“Are you being serious? You actually like me? Like, as in a romantic way?” he blurts out. “You mean it, Felix?”

“ _Yes_ , Sylvain. Ugh. Look, if you’re going to make fun of me, then—”

“What? No! No, no, no!” Sylvain fervently shakes his head. “I’m not trying to make fun of you. I'm just trying to…” He trails off, unsure of how to word his thoughts.

“Then hurry up and say what you’re trying to say.” Felix’s words seem harsh, but there is no ill intent behind them, no heat nor true anger. Instead, there’s a sense of urgency behind them.

Sylvain takes a deep, steadying breath. This is it. Surprisingly, he’s not as nervous as he always imagined he’d be. He supposes that he’s just happy that Felix took the first step, the plunge past the point of return.

Sylvain’s always been down to do anything with Felix. As the saying goes, if Felix were to jump off a bridge, Sylvain would be right beside him, ready to take the fall without even an iota of question or doubt in his body. So if Felix takes the risk to tell Sylvain how he feels, it only makes sense that Sylvain follows soon after.

“I actually like you back. In the same way. And probably just as much too.” _If not more_ , Sylvain wants to add. At the incredulous look that Felix gives him, Sylvain elaborates further. “It’s not me pitying you, okay? I promise. I really do like you. I’ve loved you since we were both stupid, snotty little kids. I’ve loved you back then and in college and now, and you’re telling me that you’re in love with me too and…” 

The true weight of the situation has dawned upon Sylvain.

Felix—the man he’s been in love with since they were both tiny kids trying to figure out how the world works together, the man he’s spent countless nights dreaming of, the man he’d give everything in the world for—is telling him that he’s been in love with Sylvain too. A towering wave of euphoria, of inexplicable _joy_ and _relief_ , collides ruthlessly into Sylvain, crashes into him the way that the waves crash into the rocks at shore _over_ and _over_ and _over_ again.

And just as the rocks are eroded away and given new form from the relentless waves of the sea, Sylvain feels like his realization and his feelings carve from him a whole new person. A person whose heart races faster and faster, whose lips quirk up into a jubilant smile, whose greatest dreams have miraculously, _finally_ come true.

All he can do is laugh.

This is all so ridiculous, so impossible, so _nonsensical._ This _has_ to be a dream! But one look at Felix's face, the way his expression slowly relaxes into a smile of his own, shows a genuine joy, a relief so _palpable,_ that Sylvain can't ever imagine on Felix.

This is real. Felix is in love with Sylvain, and Sylvain is catastrophically, unapologetically, head-over-heels in love with Felix. 

“Wow,” Sylvain says, enjoying the way that Felix’s eyes light up and the way his lips curl up into a tiny, shy smile. Felix is a far cry from that tense, frustrated man he was prior to his confession, looking so much more _radiant._ “ _Wow._ Sorry. I-I just… can’t believe this.”

“I… I can’t either,” admits Felix, his voice soft and low.

Sylvain chuckles a little. “And to think that I left Garreg Mach because of this stupid crush when you liked me back the whole time!”

Felix blinks. “You what?”

“Yeah, I… I thought that my feelings for you would be a problem.” Sylvain rubs the back of his neck, but the curious look that Felix is giving him is enough to prompt him to keep speaking. “I don’t know. I thought that if we kept hanging out, I would just… fall more for you. And I didn’t want it to get to the point where I was distracting you from your cooking, especially since you’re so focused all the time, y’know?”

“ _That’s_ why you left?” Felix huffs. “You quit cooking all over some stupid crush on me? Sylvain! Are you stupid?”

Sylvain laughs. “Okay, okay. That was a bit of an exaggeration. I also left to go to Kleiman for the reasons I told you too—about my family and stuff. But me liking you was the thing that really solidified my decision to leave, I think.” He pauses a little. “But I really, really missed you. My life just felt shitty without you in it. I missed you as a friend, and I missed you as a crush.” 

"I missed you too." Felix slowly reaches out to Sylvain, taking his hands hesitantly—no, _gingerly._ As if to give Sylvain a chance to back away. 

Sylvain takes Felix's hands without hesitation and smiles warmly, squeezing his hands a little. Felix squeezes back.

How Sylvain's dreamed of this moment. How he's dreamed of holding Felix's hands in his own, not for some kind of game or some sort of gimmick but because of genuine love. How he's dreamed of running his thumb over Felix's knuckles adoringly.

It's a small act, but this is more than he could have ever imagined, feeling Felix's warm hands against his own. Sylvain feels like he can die happy.

“I… think I liked you around college too. I liked you before then too. A lot. It’s why I was so upset when you left. And when you changed numbers.” Felix shuts his eyes tightly. “I thought you hated me or something. You just… disappeared, Sylvain. You disappeared and you wouldn’t answer my texts or calls or anything. What was I supposed to think? I… I missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry.” Sylvain pulls Felix’s hands closer to himself and pulls Felix in for a hug, loose enough so that if Felix wants to pull away, he can. But Felix only leans in more against him. “But I really had to change my number.”

“Why?”

Sylvain tenses a little. It’s still embarrassing for him to think about, but if he’s really coming clean to Felix, he might as well come clean about everything, right?

Sylvain sighs and tries not to focus on the way his mind slowly, slowly tries to worsen everything in his head. He holds onto Felix and focuses on his soft sweater that practically swallows him up, on the faint scent of Felix’s shampoo, on Felix’s arms around him. “After I left GM, I got pretty depressed. Kleiman sucked. My family sucked. And you weren’t with me anymore. So, well, I started sleeping around a bunch. By the time Dimitri and I started hanging out, I just had a mess of contacts on my phone, a lot of whom I don’t particularly want to talk about. But he and I agreed that I should probably start over, so I got a new number.”

Felix tightens his grip on Sylvain, burying his face against Sylvain’s chest. “Well… I’m here for you. No matter what happens or what you go through. And I don’t plan on leaving your side until you tell me to.”

Felix peeks his face up at Sylvain, his expression solemn, patient, warm. No judgment, no pity, no disgust. Just genuine concern and care. 

_I love you,_ Sylvain's brain cries out. _I don't deserve someone like you._

Despite how Sylvain’s brain is churning out nightmarish and ridiculous situations of how Felix is lying to him to hurt him and make fun of him, Sylvain can only smile back.

“I won’t tell you to leave. I would never even _dream_ of having you leave me right when I got you where I want you. And I don’t plan on leaving your side either, Fe, until you’re tired of me.” Sylvain reaches up a hand and ruffles Felix’s hair, Felix scowling a little as he reaches up to fix his hair. 

“Dumbass. I’m not going to get tired of you.”

“What, you mean like ever?” Sylvain smirks, raising an eyebrow.

Felix shuts his eyes a little and leans into their embrace again, resting his head against Sylvain. “Ever.”

Sylvain hugs Felix tighter. “Even if I ask you something stupid?”

“Ask me and find out.”

“About that kiss from the other night…” Sylvain smiles as Felix looks up at him curiously. “How about we try that again? A little more seriously this time?”

Felix rolls his eyes, but he grabs Sylvain by the shirt collar and pulls him down. Just before their lips meet, Sylvain can feel Felix ghost something over his lips, his voice just barely audible.

“Ever. I mean it. I love you.”

And when their lips meet— _finally, finally_ , echoes the simple mantra in Sylvain’s head like a chorus of joyous angels—Sylvain, with the telltale hot sting of tears at his eyes, feels a smile on Felix’s lips.

-

Dimitri hums to himself as he checks over his attire one last time. It’s quite plain, a simple pair of dark jeans, a nice sweater, a denim jacket with a smattering of neat and unique pins his friends have bought for him over the years, and his hair done up by his beloved, who is now lying on their bed and watching him, almost sulking over the fact that he’s leaving for dinner soon. It isn’t a bad look—after all, how could it be when his lover has spent so much time to help him look nice for the occasion?—but…

Dimitri never feels right about dressing down to come eat at such a high-end establishment, one run by one of the most famous chefs in maybe the whole world. With such a renowned restaurant, so finely decorated indoors and out, with staff members wearing such well-adorned uniforms, and with even the customers all dressing up in their finest clothes for a night just to eat, it’s only natural that Dimitri would feel out of place. Ordinarily, on any of their regular restaurant visits, Dimitri would not mind dressing down, but it is usually because Sylvain is taking him to fast food restaurants, where most people do not particularly dress up in the first place.

However, Sylvain had a point when he had mentioned the likelihood of paparazzi at a high-end establishment, waiting to catch celebrities, insisting that Dimitri dress down to seem more inconspicuous. So he’ll comply and dress down again.

It’s been a while since Dimitri’s last seen Sylvain in person. Sylvain seems to have been doing fine on his social media. Back when he was in darker times, Sylvain would hardly post anything, but now, his page is chock full of little comments and photos, things that Dimitri will see in passing in the very rare times that he actually uses his social media. And when they text, Sylvain seems brighter somehow. Happier, even.

Now Dimitri isn’t any sort of genius. He’s just an actor who sometimes models when his manager asks it of him. But he has an inkling of the reason why—no, he has quite a strong hunch that he knows what has happened.

Yes, it is likely the doing whoever Sylvain’s taking him out to see tonight while they’re doing a review on one of the new menu items at The Lone Wolf. They are most likely the reason behind his newfound joy.

“I have someone I want you to meet, Dima,” Sylvain had said over the phone, a smile practically audible through the tinny receivers. “But don’t be nervous or anything. It’s just gonna be you and me for a majority of the time.”

This mystery person—Dimitri and his lover have been doing their own speculating on who or what it is, but there’s nothing but concerns from Dimitri’s end.

“Mitya, love, it’s probably fine. Sylvain’s very smart. He’s grown from when he was in college. He’ll be careful, I’m sure.”

But Dimitri still has his fears, his doubts. Perhaps it’s his cynicality, his subtle and hidden distrust of people. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t want to see Sylvain hurt again, doesn’t want to see him trying to pick the pieces of himself up off the ground and putting them together. More than likely it’s both.

What if Sylvain’s forced himself into some sort of terrible relationship? What if he’s fallen back into his bad habits again? What if this outing is some subconscious cry for help?

Dimitri grimaces at himself in the mirror. If Sylvain’s mystery person is an ill fit for Sylvain—if they treat Sylvain questionably or with any sort of questionable motive—Dimitri will give them a piece of his mind.

The ring of his doorbell interrupts his thoughts.

“Ah, that must be him.” Dimitri pockets his phone and his keys and turns to his lover. “Are you sure you do not want to come? I’m sure Sylvain would not mind the company.”

His lover, ever considerate and ever polite, simply smiles, a warm and healing smile that rivals the biggest and brightest of suns. “No, I’m alright. You’d best get going, yeah? Don’t keep him waiting.” A brief pause. “But tell me how it goes?”

Dimitri smiles. “Of course.”

A kiss and farewells, promises to see one another soon, are exchanged before Dimitri steps out of his house. He locks the door, puts his keys away, and smiles as he turns to face Sylvain standing outside of his car, though his smile falters when he finds…

“Sylvain, why are you dressed like that?” he asks slowly. Briefly, he asks himself, _was I supposed to dress like that too?_ before dispelling that thought from his mind. _What a nonsensical thought. The only people who dress like that are…_

“Like what?” Sylvain asks innocently.

“Like…” Dimitri gestures at Sylvain’s attire, consisting of loose-fitting pants in a checkerboard pattern and a pure-white, double-breasted coat. Interestingly enough, the coat seems to bear some sort of embroidery. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be Sylvain’s name.

“Hm? Oh, I didn’t have time to switch out from my work clothes.” Sylvain waves away his concerns quite flippantly before patting his car on the hood. “Come on. We’ll be late for our reservation.”

“Work clothes?” Dimitri raises an eyebrow, but Sylvain’s already shutting the door to the driver’s side. It’s likely that he had not heard Dimitri’s inquiry. Ah, well. Dimitri figures he can ask about Sylvain’s new job later.

Dimitri deliberately steps up to the doors for the back of the car. He's sure that Sylvain has his mystery guest sitting in the front beside himself, so it would only be reasonable for Dimitri to sit in the back.

Yet, just as he raises a hand to pull the door open, Sylvain rolls down his passenger seat’s window, revealing that there isn’t anyone in the passenger seat.

“No need for that. Sit up front, Dima.”

“Oh? Is your guest in the back perhaps?” Dimitri quickly glances through the window but sees no one in the back.

“Nope. We’ll see him later.”

“Later,” Dimitri echoes, though he’s more interested in the pronoun. So their guest for tonight is a ‘he.’ Dimitri’s guard doesn’t falter for even a moment. Sylvain’s shown interest in some questionable people other than women before.

Once they are in the car, starting their journey to The Lone Wolf, Dimitri completely forgets about Sylvain’s odd behavior and his strange clothes. Their conversation is relaxed, casual, comfortable, as it always is. They catch up on all that they have missed out during all the time they have missed—from the roles Dimitri’s going to playing next to Sylvain’s latest music recommendations. Time flies with them talking and laughing as they do.

Before Dimitri knows it, they’re in the parking lot to The Lone Wolf, Sylvain unbuckling his seatbelt and moving to get out of the car.

Dimitri reaches out and grabs Sylvain’s wrist.

“Sylvain.”

Sylvain blinks and turns to face him. “What’s up?”

“May I ask a favor of you?”

“Sure.”

Dimitri sighs. How can he put this lightly? He hasn’t much time to deliberate on what he’d like to say, as Sylvain flashes his wrist at Dimitri.

“We’ll going to be late.”

“I’ll keep it brief then.” Dimitri lets out a sigh. “Sylvain. Dear friend. Dear companion of mine. Please. Please, for the love of all that is good, keep your opinions on the chef’s cooking to yourself this time. Please?” Dimitri grimaces. “I fear that that my heart cannot handle it much more if you insult the chef and summon him to our table every time we come here.”

Sylvain wears a mischievous smile, but much to Dimitri’s delight, he agrees.

“Alright, Dima. No fuckery this time around. Just two dudes enjoying food. Okay?”

Dimitri nods. “No fuckery,” he agrees.

The two of them head into the restaurant, though Dimitri has a bad feeling about something, stirring his insides up and making him feel almost a little nauseous.

-

The meal goes excellently, without Sylvain summoning the chef over even once. Any time spent with friends is already quite a terrific time, but couple that with the angry Felix-free time and the food, and Dimitri’s having quite a night to remember.

The food is stellar, an incredible and rare burst of flavor on Dimitri’s tongue, so vivid that it practically brings him to tears while Sylvain beams at him and excitedly orders him some to take home with him. All the while, Sylvain snaps photos of their food and of them. He jots down a few things that both of them noted about the new dishes and about whatever else they happened to eat, be it appetizers or desserts.

As they eat, they chat leisurely. It’s less catching up and more focused on their food, especially as Dimitri is so fixated on how he can taste such food without being able to taste much else, but nonetheless, they have a nice conversation. At some point, Dimitri points out Sylvain’s uniform once more and asks a bit on it.

“Yeah, I recently got back into cooking. I love it a lot,” Sylvain admits, forking a portion of the pike-based dish he ordered—the Bourgeois Pike, the menu had called it. Sylvain takes a moment to savor the rich, expensive spices sprinkled about the fish and the side vegetables with a small smile before continuing. “I’m putting these skills to work now. Got a job at a pretty good restaurant.”

“A restaurant! What would its name be? Where is it?” Dimitri smiles. “I wouldn’t mind dropping by with a few friends or with my partner.”

Dimitri’s quite surprised at Sylvain’s new choice of work. After all, it’s been a while since Sylvain’s truly done much cooking.

Whether Sylvain noticed or not, another reason for him wanting to participate in his little study of Dimitri’s sense of taste was to avoid his own kitchen. While Dimitri can understand the effects of Sylvain’s depression creating such an avoidance of doing tedious chores, Dimitri cannot truly recall the last time that Sylvain’s cooked anything for himself other than instant foods.

Well, in the end, he is happy to see that Sylvain is cooking for others and hinting that he’s learned to cook for himself—and enjoy it.

Sylvain shrugs. “I just got the job, but I can’t remember the name of it. It’s kind of obscure.”

Dimitri hums. He imagines a small restaurant out in the middle of nowhere. No cars, no buildings, nothing but vast stretches of snow-covered land, as is typical of Faerghus. Perhaps buried underneath the piles and piles of snow. He can’t imagine Sylvain working somewhere so remote. Perhaps it is not that obscure then.

“Better for your blog, then, I suppose. I’m sure your employer would enjoy the prospects of you bringing in customers with your blog.”

Sylvain laughs. “Maybe so!” He smiles. “I’m just happy to be working there, you know? I haven’t been there for long, but my coworkers treat me like family, and I think the boss likes me, so I get a pretty lenient schedule.”

“Oh, that’s tremendous, Sylvain!” Dimitri beams at him. He continues to shower Sylvain in well wishes and encouragement on his new job, hoping that he’ll truly grow to love cooking once more and love his job too. Sylvain already seems to be loving it there, so Dimitri’s hopes are high.

Yet as they speak and dine, Dimitri can’t help but to notice that their mystery guest hasn’t made his appearance yet. Upon asking Sylvain about him, Sylvain only laughs and tells him not to worry about it, furthering Dimitri’s worry.

“He’ll come eventually, I promise!” Sylvain insists. “Let’s just eat for now, okay?”

Dimitri has a terrible feeling that maybe Sylvain’s been stood up. He gives Sylvain a sympathetic look, though Sylvain pretends not to understand what his sympathy is for—at least, Dimitri thinks it’s faux-confusion.

And just a few minutes after the last time that Dimitri asks about their mystery guest, when their desserts come around, he quickly wishes he had shown Sylvain less sympathy.

Sylvain takes one bite of his Fruit and Herring Tart and scrunches his face up immediately.

“What’s wrong?” Dimitri foolishly asks. He should have known that Sylvain was putting up some kind of front when Sylvain didn’t spit out food that was supposedly so horrendous that it warranted bringing out the head chef. Sylvain ate his tart and continued to do so, even after he gestured over one of the waitresses.

“Something’s off about this,” Sylvain says to the waitress. "No... Something's missing."

Dimitri’s perfect dinner hangout is starting to head straight into the disaster category. In a desperate attempt to salvage what he can of their hangout, he asks, “What happened to ‘no fuckery’?”

Sylvain doesn’t reply, too busy speaking with the purple-haired waitress, who just sighs softly.

“Do you want to speak with Felix?”

“Yeah, I want to talk to him. Bring him out here, please.”

Dimitri, wearing a thoroughly disappointed and exasperated expression while he eats his own Fruit and Herring Tart, watches as the purple-haired waitress scurries to the kitchen, disappearing behind closed doors.

“Sylvain.” A haggard type of frustration, the kind that runs bone-deep and leaves people feeling jaded, haunts his tone.

“What?”

“I asked—no, I _begged_ —of you not to do something like this, and yet…”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“Sylvain, this isn’t some kind of joke! You can’t just—”

The violent slam of the kitchen doors cuts Dimitri off. Dimitri wants to sink into his seat as he watches head chef Felix Fraldarius come huffing down the aisles of the restaurant with murder in his eyes. His eyes through his restaurant as he storms down to their table.

Dimitri is expecting the worst. He’s expecting to maybe see his name as the headlines in tabloids, loudly proclaiming him and his friend as spoiled and inconsiderate. He’s expecting to have to pay this poor chef for putting up with them again, possibly even going to court. He’s expecting to have to take his beloved and move them out of the country to avoid facing the shame of disgracing a head chef in his restaurant like this.

Yet, when Felix comes around to their table and sees Sylvain, it’s like the deflating of a balloon. All fight and fury leave his body.

“Ah. You. That makes sense.”

Felix crosses his arms and moves to leave, but Sylvain, chuckling, stands up and pulls Felix back to the table in a bear hug. Felix puts up no fight, coming along though an exasperated sigh still manages to escape his lips.

With one arm resting snugly around Felix’s waist, Sylvain practically glows. “Dimitri, I’d like you to meet our guest of the night.”

“Sylvain, this isn’t funny. Let Mr. Fraldarius go.”

“Yeah, Sylv, let me go already.”

 _Sylv?_ Dimitri muses to himself. _Does Sylvain harass this poor chef so much that they’re on a first name basis? Not just first names, but on a nickname basis?_

Sylvain only laughs again. “No, no. Let me formally introduce him, Dima.” Sylvain leans his head against Felix’s and smiles warmly. “Dimitri, this is my _boyfriend_ , Felix.”

Dimitri drops the tiny dessert fork he’s holding, ignoring how it clatters uselessly against the fine porcelain of the plate. He stares, wide-eyed at Sylvain and Felix.

Felix Fraldarius is their mystery guest? And he’s not just some random guest, but he’s also Sylvain’s boyfriend?

“C’mon, Fe, say hi at least to him. He’s a good friend.”

“Hello,” Felix greets stiffly, though his face is as red as Sylvain’s hair.

And just like that, all reservations Dimitri had about Sylvain’s plan of dragging Felix out are erased. Dimitri springs out of his seat in excitement.

Dimitri has been worried all night about meeting someone who wouldn’t be a good match for Sylvain, someone who would want to hurt Sylvain or who wouldn’t truly understand him. Yet, here Sylvain is, nuzzled up against the man he’s had a crush on for who knows how long. Against the man who’s been giving him such heartfelt, longing looks when Sylvain wasn’t looking.

Dimitri can only be happy for them. He can already tell that they’re quite a good match for one another, given that Felix’s distant and annoyed front is quite thinly-veiled embarrassment at the moment.

“Sylvain! Had I known you were introducing me to someone so important, I would have dressed up more! What a first impression.” Dimitri holds out his hand to Felix. “It is truly an honor to finally be able to greet you as my friend’s significant other, Felix. I am Dimitri, Sylvain’s friend.”

“Finally?” Sylvain echoes, a little shocked.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Felix gives Dimitri a dirty look but takes his hand and shakes it briefly before lightly shoving Sylvain away. “Can’t believe you’re wasting my time like this, Sylvain. What are you doing anyway? Get to work already.”

“Work?”

Sylvain turns to Dimitri with a great smile. “I work here part-time! I actually set up our reservation so my shift would start right about when our hangout ended.” He gestures at his clothes. “Which is why I dressed like this.”

“Here?!” Dimitri blurts. “You said you worked somewhere obscure.”

Felix wrinkles his nose. “ _Obscure?_ ”

“I wanted it to be a surprise to Dima. But also, you really did put this restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, Fe.”

Felix huffs. “Okay, that’s enough, Sylvain. Stop fucking around and see me in my office after you get whatever this is wrapped up.” Felix storms away.

“He… does not look very happy.”

Sylvain smiles. “Maybe to you.”

Dimitri smiles himself at the slight dazed look to Sylvain’s eyes, a soft pink to his cheeks and a vulnerable gaze with a tiny, adoring smile. Dimitri feels that perhaps this is the one. That this is the relationship that will bring Sylvain that last bit of joy other than his friends and his blog he’s needed all this time.

The two of them finish up their food, fight over who’s going to pay—Dimitri manages to convince Sylvain to let him pay for once as long as Sylvain gets to pay for the taxi taking Dimitri home—and they exchange farewells and well wishes and promises to meet up again soon.

As Dimitri waits at the entrance of the restaurant for the taxi to pull up to the front, he can’t help but to cast a glance back behind him. Through all the chaos of the restaurant, with waitresses and waiters hurrying about with food and trays and little notepads while dozens of customers fill their tables, Dimitri manages to catch sight of Sylvain standing near an office door, the blinds shut.

Seemingly unaware that Dimitri is watching him, Sylvain fidgets with his uniform, rolling up his sleeves and unbuttoning the very top button. He runs a hand through his hair, adjusts the toque sitting on his head, and straightens his posture. He knocks at the door and looks around as he waits, presumably for Felix.

Dimitri winces. He hopes that Sylvain doesn’t get into too much trouble with Felix all because Sylvain wanted to be showy in how he presented his exciting news to Dimitri. But he can't but to feel a little worried. Would Felix really summon Sylvain to his office if he weren't going to chew Sylvain out for wasting precious time that could be spent cooking?

Sylvain and Dimitri momentarily lock eyes. Dimitri smiles at him, as if to tell him _good luck_. Sylvain just winks, earning a small shake of Dimitri’s head.

Dimitri gets a notification on his phone that his taxi has arrived. As he leaves, he turns to wave goodbye at Sylvain, but he’s instead met with the sight of the office door opening.

Almost as soon as the door opens, a pair of hands shoot out. For a split second, Dimitri catches Felix’s pink-cheeked profile as he reaches out at a cheekily smiling Sylvain. One of his hands grips Sylvain’s wrist and the other gently cradles his cheek, as it to direct his gaze forward, as if to direct it at Felix.

The door shuts quietly behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> felix: oh, sylvain, there you are. my love. my sweet. my sugar, vanilla, flour, egg whites, baking power-
> 
> sylvain, without looking up from the blog entry he's writing: felix, sweetheart, you're just reciting a cake recipe now. 
> 
> felix: ah.
> 
> \-----
> 
>  ~~might think of making some kind of sequel/epilogue, but i'll need,, time to brainstorm and fully flesh that out if i decide on it haha askldjfksdjf~~
> 
> thank you again for reading my fic!!


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